WAR BREAD
WAR BREAD
A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF
THE WAR AND RELIEF
IN BELGIUM
BY
EDWARD EYRE HUNT
American Delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgiu
in charge of the Province of Antwerp
(With Illustrations}
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published November, 1916
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY. N. J.
Aon
Zyne Eminentie
DESIRE JOSEPH KARDINAAL MERCIER
Aartsbisschop van Mechelen
aan
DEN HEER LOUIS FRANCK
Gemeenteraadslidy Schepen, en Nolksvertegenwoordiger,
Foorzitter van het Nationaal Komiteit voor
Hulp en Feeding der Provincie
Antwerpen
aan
DEN HEER EDOUARD BUNGE
.^ Foorzitter van het Nationaal Komiteit voor
Hulf en Feeding der Provincie Antwerpen
fo
HERBERT CLARK HOOVER, of California
Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium
and to
BENNETT H. BRANS CO MB, of Alabama
OLIVER C. CARMICHAEL, of Alabama
RICHARD H. SIMPSON, of Indiana
W. W. FLINT, of New Hampshire
W. W. STRATTON, of Utah
THOMAS O. CONNETT, of New York
GARDNER RICHARDSON, of Connecticut
GILCHRIST H. STOCKTON, of Florida
J. B. VAN SCHAICK, of New York
Loyal friends, Americans ally fellow-members of the
Antwerp delegation of the Commission for
Relief in Belgium
Thanks are due the Metropolitan Magazine, the Out-
look, Leslie's Weekly, the New Republic, and Collier's
Weekly for permission to republish portions of this book
which have appeared in their pages.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGK
I. A VOYAGE IN WARTIME I
Off to the Wars !
Mutiny 4
Captured at Sea . . 13
Floating Mines 19
Interned 23
A Night on Devil's Island 27
II. BERLIN THE TERRIBLE 34
Osnabriick to Berlin 34
Prussia Enthroned 38
How the Poor Fared 44
War Worship 50
German " Preparedness " 53
Three Famous Socialists 59
The Attack 67
III. THE FALL OF ANTWERP 71
Berlin Versus Antwerp 71
An American Spy 74
England Aids Belgium 78
War Correspondents .82
The Bombardment of Antwerp 87
What a Shrapnel Shell Did Qi
A Bath and a Forced March 95
Blowing up the Bridge . . . . • • 100
Enter: the Germans IO4
The Army of Occupation .107
First Aid to Antwerp "0
v
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
On the Road to Holland 114
Vluchtelingen . ........ 118
At the Frontier 121
Dutch Hospitality 127
Atrocities 133
Relief Work in Holland 138
Cities of Refuge 144
A Story of King Albert 148
IV. BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE 152
Antwerp Again 152
The Conquerors 156
Humorous Herr Baedeker 162
German Government 169
V. STARVING BELGIUM 175
The Catastrophe 175
The Cry for Help 180
Brand Whitlock 185
Herbert C. Hoover 191
The Commission for Relief in Belgium . . . 198
A Dead City 202
American Delegate for Antwerp 206
Misery in the Campine 210
Communications 216
A Visit from Hoover . 220
The Christmas Ship . . . . . . . .224
Belgian Gratitude . 228
Cardinal Mercier's Pastoral Letter . . . .235
Patriotic Clocks 241
Alarums and Excursions 245
Internal Conflicts 251
The Waesland 255
A Belgian Co-operative 258
Breathing Spells 262
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER PAGE
VI. THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE 269
A Great Financier 269
Hard Cash 273
VII. SAVING A NATION 280
Their Daily Bread 280
Joyous Entries 286
Bread Lines and Soup Kitchens 293
Health, Clothing, and Housing 296
Unemployment 304
VIII. DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS 308
Hauling Down the Flag 308
Great Britain Takes a Hand 311
Feeding the North of France ...... 315
IX. AMERICA AND BELGIUM 318
The Golden Legend 318
La Belle Belgique . ., 322
APPENDIX
I. Three Famous Socialists 327
II. Press and Post 331
III. Public Charity and Exchange 333
IV. Incredibly Small Expenses . . . . . . 334
V. Gifts of Service .335
VI. The First Supplies 335
VII. Early Food Shipments 336
VIII. Flemish 337
IX. The Poor .338
X. Belgian Committees 339
XI. The Millers' Belgian Relief Movement . . .341
XII. The Priest 341
XIII. Ante-Bellum Belgium 342
XIV. The Artistic Temperament 342
XV. First Aid .... 343
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XVI. Bar-le-Duc 344
XVII. Interlocking Organizations 345
XVIII. Food Requirements 345
XIX. Coffee 347
XX. A Co-operative Society . . . . . . -347
XXI. The National Relief Committee* . . . .348
XXII. The Contribution of War 349
XXIII. Finance 349
XXIV. Wheat and Flour . . . ... . .351
XXV. Distribution 352
XXVI. Soup Recipes 353
XXVII. Selling Gift Goods . 354
XXVIII. " American Shops " 356
XXIX. The Clothing Workshop 357
XXX. Temporary Houses 359
XXXI. Unemployment Relief V. 361
XXXII. Bricks and Laces 362
XXXIII. The Crop Commission 365
XXXIV. Belgian Harvests 366
XXXV. The North of France 367
XXXVI. French Financial Organization . . . . . 368
XXXVII. Funding the Relief Work 37<>
XXXVIII. Governmental Subsidies 372
XXXIX. Belgian Gratitude 372
ILLUSTRATIONS
WAR BREAD Frontispiece
PAGE
YOUNG GERMANY , 52
THE AUTHOR'S PASSPORT 74
" BEATING THE CAMERA " 94
BELGIAN REFUGE DIRECTORY 130
THE BREAD LINE 166
BRAND WHITLOCK 188
HERBERT C. HOOVER 104
Louis FRANCK 206
MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF ANTWERP 222
CHRISTMAS, 1914 228
CARDINAL MERCIER 238
EDOUARD BUNGE 262
JULY FOURTH, 1915 278
TEMPORARY HOUSES 302
AN "AMERICAN SHOP" 312
FLOUR SACKS 324
ANTWERP'S CLOTHING WORKSHOP • 358
WAR BREAD
CHAPTER I
A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
OFF TO THE WARS
THE Holland-America liner " Nieuw Amsterdam " lay
fuming at her Hoboken pier. It was midnight, August
24-25, the first month of the war. The air was heavy,
like hot oil ; pier lights scorched the dark with their elec-
trical glare; and the ship's funnel spat smoke into the
starless vault overhead.
Gangways vomited stewards and hastily swallowed
them again, for we were sailing in less than an hour.
My trunks were lined with cartons of condensed soups,
egg powder, and Erbsenwurst, for reports on European
food conditions were already alarming; the money-belt
about my waist was uncomfortably heavy with British
and American gold-pieces, for the newspapers said
there was no reliable exchange abroad ; my pockets were
full of important letters, passports, and a bulky life in-
surance policy. The times were inauspicious for travel.
Yet the ship appeared to be full. Everywhere were
2 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
strange faces. Heavy featured, gruff voiced men, nine-
teen to forty years old, with thick silver watch-chains
looped across their waistcoats and little sausage-roll
satchels in their hands, streamed into the ship and shouted
good-bys to the crowds of friends who lined the pier.
" Who are they, steward? " I asked.
" German reservists, sir."
" But I thought the ship would be empty."
" Nearly a thousand of them, sir."
In the steerage twenty or thirty men strolled aim-
lessly up deck and down, droning, with impartial en-
thusiam and tunelessness, " The Watch on the Rhine,"
" Hail, Kaiser, to Thee," and a song from the latest
musical comedy on Broadway. The night grew more
and more electric, and half an hour before sailing time
the tension suddenly snapped like cord. A steerage
passenger with hair clipped convict-close and face fiery
red, shirtless and hatless, reeled slowly down deck, sing-
ing. Others followed him unsteadily, and at the end of
the song they leaned together, arms linked, and he led
them in three "hochs" for the Kaiser. Passengers
from the first and second cabins cheered. The mob of
friends ashore in the glare of the pier lights waved
handkerchiefs and shouted applause.
There was a sudden stir beside me. On the promenade
deck a huge reservist, his cheeks slashed with the rapier
scars of his German student corps days, bellowed a rip-
OFF TO THE WARS 3
ping "hurrrrrrrrrrrrah!" and instantly, as if a military
command had been given and an army had obeyed, the
masses of men fell into triple lines across the decks, fac-
ing the pier, and began to sing "The Watch on the
Rhine." They roared and rumbled and trampled the
music out, so that it beat in a steady series of explosions
against the high walls of the pier. If Krupp guns could
sing they would sing like that. There was more menace
in the music than in any I had heard before. It ex-
pressed no wild, universal human longing, such as one
feels in the chant in the " Marseillaise " ; it seemed part
of the vast, age-long, irresistible march of the Teutonic
races.
They sang Deutschland ilber alles. Volleys of voices
beat my ears with a shock like battle. The singers, I
learned afterward, had come from Alaska, Canada, the
United States, Mexico, Brazil, the Saskatchewan, but
they sang as if they had been drilled to sing together
since childhood. Then came " Hail, Kaiser, to Thee " ;
then the Austrian National Hymn ; then the old Swabian
folk-song, Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Stadtele hinaus,
the farewell which German soldiers have sung for cen-
turies to their sweethearts when they go to the wars.
And there were sweethearts at hand; the pier was
lined with them, waving their handkerchiefs and cheer-
ing at every pause in the singing. There were mothers
and wives and brothers and sisters and friends, all there
on the pier, three or four yards away, packed against the
4 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
rail and plainly visible in the white electric glare. But
while the men sang there were no tears, and when the
singing stopped there were no tears, and when at one
o'clock the ship began slowly to move out into the black
river and the cheering rose to salvoes of enthusiasm, un-
til the Captain had to blow his whistle to drown the
partisan noise, still there were no tears. The grief of
parting hid itself under a stern and pitiless joy at being
able to share in Germany's war. The men were off to
win personal glory, but far more than that they were to
win national glory; glory for Germany, for German
might, German efficiency, German organization, German
intelligence, German capacity for taking pains — for
" Germany first/' Deutschland iiber dies.
The passengers on the " Nieuw Amsterdam " did not
trouble to think that America was a neutral country;
that the ship on which they sailed was a neutral ship.
They did not trouble to think what a scandalized New
York City press and public would say of them next
morning. They were off to the wars at last. They cared
for one thing — for Deutschland iiber alles, over neutral
ships and neutral nations, neutral thoughts and neutral
silence, too; for they were going home to the wars.
MUTINY
" It can't be; it can't be, I tell you! "
A group of reservists pounded the ship's bulletin-
board with their fists and yelled in fear and hate. Others
MUTINY 5
clawed at them, struggling and swaying to and fro in an
effort to read something newly written on a square sheet
of white paper, posted under the heading " Marconi-
grams." The day's war news, picked up by wireless and
posted at noontime, was already old. A sketchy war
map pinned to the bulletin-board by Dr. Hendrik Wil-
lem van Loon showed the victorious German armies
sweeping like a sickle through France toward Paris.
Louvain was burning. Belgium was overrun. Lille had
fallen. Cossacks were in East Prussia.
But a more sensational message had arrived. Men
came running from up and down the saloon stairs and
fought those ahead of them to read it.
"What had happened?" they demanded breathlessly.
"What is it?"
"Bad news?"
"The English?"
" Is it the damned English? "
" Are we going to be captured ? Are we going to be
captured ? "
We had been seven days at sea. The " Nieuw Am-
sterdam " was more like a military transport than a neu-
tral liner. Of her thousand passengers only seventy-
five were women ; two hundred Dutch reservists were in
the steerage — they were wanted at home to keep Hol-
land out of the war — and more than seven hundred and
fifty German and Austrian citizens of military age were
6 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
scattered throughout the ship. There was a Prussian
staff officer in the steerage; a nephew of Count von
Bernstorff, German Ambassador to Washington, was in
the second cabin; there were privates in the first cabin,
and one and all they tramped the sanded decks from
morning till night like infantry on the march. They
cultivated bristling mustaches, and the ship's barber
grew rich clipping their hair.
Arid always they talked of the war. They knew to
the slightest detail the organization of their armies, the
number of corps, and the broad strategy of the war.
War to them was a science, not a thing of horror. War
was to recreate Europe. War was an incident in na-
tional life ; a step on a long road, deliberately planned for,
deliberately entered upon, the end of it long foreseen.
Let the nations fight: Germany would conquer. In the
end Germany must dominate Europe, and confer upon
it German order, German system, German efficiency.
Things like Belgian neutrality were unimportant when
the evolution of the German Empire was at stake.
But after the first wild burst of enthusiasm, the
reservists grew anxious. Fear, laboriously held in check,
lurked always beneath the surface of their thoughts.
Every smudge of smoke on the horizon suggested a pur-
suing British cruiser. The thought of England became
a nightmare. Every league nearer the English coast
made England bulk larger in their imaginations, and they
MUTINY
7
talked less and less of Germany and more and more of
England. The steerage passengers lay all day like
sleepy, watchful cats, stretched out on slack gray can-
vases covering the life-boats, and studied the pitiless open
sea. First cabin passengers promenaded the hurricane
deck and swept the waters with glasses or demanded
news at the door of the Marconi room. Rumors flew
from mouth to mouth, and fear and hatred throve.
Thick fog came with the seventh day at sea, and the
spirits of the reservists rose again. " It will probably
hold until we reach Rotterdam," they said. " But the
British won't dare to touch us, even if they stop us.
This is a neutral ship. The Germans will be in Calais
by the time we reach the English Channel. We'll put
a pistol to the Captain's head and make him take us in-
side the three-mile limit and land us right with the Ger-
man army ! "
But Captain Baron of the " Nieuw Amsterdam " now
turned the tables on his passengers. On the bulletin-
board was a short and ominous message from the cap-
tain of our sister ship, the " Rotterdam," en route to
New York:
Noon position 50.9 N., 15.30 W. Foggy in Channel.
Since good weather. Was held up by British cruiser be-
tween Downs and Lizard. " Potsdam " was ordered by
English warship to proceed to Falmouth. No news about
passengers when I left Rotterdam, but probably Germans
and Austrian reservists taken off. Pleasant trip.
(Signed) STENGER.
8 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
The group about the bulletin-board roared threats and
suggestions. " We must fight ! We must do something !
Go to the Captain and make him take us back! Make
him take us back to New York. Make him go north
around Ireland. Make him take us to Hamburg. Shoot
him if he won't do it!"
I raced up to the Captain's office, just below the bridge,
and waited for the next move. Fog deluged the ship,
screening her from all eyes, and the waves roared be-
neath. Sky and sea and air were a dirty, dangerous
gray. But the fog horn was dumb and the wireless gave
no sign. We were silently running toward the British
patrols. Somewhere hidden in the fogbanks before us
the liner " Rotterdam " was hurrying toward New York
and safety. Would the Germans compel our Captain
to put them aboard her? Would they make him turn
back with the " Nieuw Amsterdam"? I knew they
were desperate. The men clustered about the bulletin-
board were half frantic with fear. Their next move
would be interesting.
There was not long to wait. Six officers of the re-
serves suddenly appeared in line at the door, bowed, re-
moved their caps, and in perfect silence filed over the
threshold and ranged themselves about the Cap-
tain.
" Herr Kapitan" the senior German began, clutching
his North German Yacht Club cap in his nervous fingers,
" we have seen the marconigram from the captain of the
MUTINY 9
' Rotterdam/ We request that you turn the ship about
and sail her back to New York."
The Captain's chilblain cheeks glowed crimson and his
walrus mustaches stiffened as he answered in halting
German, carefully picking his words. " Gentlemen/' he
began, " this is a neutral ship. I go on, or I lose my
ship and my commission."
" Then, Captain, you must set us on board the ' Rot-
terdam ' to be returned to America."
" But," objected Captain Baron, " the ' Rotterdam ' is
crowded already. Every ship for America now is full
with Americans anxious to get home ; nik wahr? There
are eight hundred of you. How could I transfer so
many?"
The spokesman flushed. He decided to be brutally
frank, to think only of his own safety. "We do not
ask you to transfer all," he said sullenly.
"Who then?"
" I speak for myself and my friends." He indicated
the committee with a wave of his cap.
The Captain retorted hotly, " I will not do for you
what I would not do for the others ! "
" All the first-class passengers, then ! "
" I will not do for the first-class what I cannot do for
the second-class and steerage." Then he added, per-
suasively, " Think, gentlemen ; there would be riot
there if I transferred only you."
io A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
The committee muttered. " Transfer all, then. Cap-
tain, you must "
"Transfer in this heavy sea?" The Captain stared.
" My boats would be knocked to pieces. If one boat is
smashed, if one life is lost, I am responsible ; nik wahrf "
The committee grew openly angry. One after the
other they snapped out orders, and the Captain answered
more and more stiffly.
" You must take us to Spain ! "
" To Spain ? " The Captain shrugged his shoulders.
" I have only enough coal to reach Rotterdam. My
papers say I go to Rotterdam. I go there — not to
Spain."
"To the Azores!"
" But, gentlemen, the Azores are two thousand miles
away."
" Around England to the north! "
"But coal?"
" By God, Captain, you must do something for us !
It was understood when we bought our tickets of your
company "
" Gentlemen, gentlemen, nothing is understood at sea.
Anything can happen at sea ; nik wahrf On the back of
your ticket it says you agree this company shall not be
held responsible for loss or damage arising from acts
of God, accidents at sea, or any acts of princes or rulers
of peoples."
" But, Captain "
MUTINY „
" I cannot do anything."
" But "
" I say I cannot do anything."
Perspiration started on the brows of the committee-
men. They stared at each other and at the Captain help-
lessly. Each man was thinking only of himself. Free-
dom or prison until the end of the war hung in the bal-
ance, and the Captain held the scales. They itched to
settle the matter by a fight, instead of argument, but the
old Captain was stubbornly firm. " If there is outbreak
I put the troublemakers in irons ; nik wahr? "
The committee decided to surrender at discretion, and
its spokesman addressed the Captain again. " Herr
Kapitan, will you allow us to send a marconigram to the
captain of the ' Rotterdam ' ? "
" Certainly, gentlemen."
" We will ask him to take us off."
"Of course, of course. But I know what the captain
of the ' Rotterdam ' says. He says, ' I have already
three thousand passengers. I cannot take one more/
But you may send the message."
The committee climbed slowly down the ladder, brush-
ing aside nine-year old Hans, a little lonely German boy
who would never march or fight because of a lame hip,
but who played constantly with toy soldiers. The crowd
of passengers rumbled with excitement. They rushed
on the committeemen and overwhelmed them with ques-
tions. "What did the Captain say?" "Will he set us
12 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
on the 'Rotterdam'?" "Are we going back to
America? " " What are we going to do? " " Shall we
get through? " " Are we going to Hamburg? "
" To the smoking-room ! " ordered the senior member
loudly. " To the smoking-room ! to the smoking-room ! "
echoed the crowd, and rushed down the decks and
through the narrow doorways, hunting for places of van-
tage among the tables, chairs, and heavily upholstered
seats.
The chairman walked to the center of the room,
ceremoniously removed his cap and placed it beside a
plate of sandwiches, cleared his throat, and waited for
absolute silence before he began.
" Gentlemen/' he said, ignoring the presence of the
ladies, " the Captain permits us to send a marconi to the
captain of the ' Rotterdam ' to ask that he take us back
to New York. We can do nothing else. How many
favor?"
Twenty or thirty hands flew up. There was consterna-
tion on every face, but no attempt at debate. The chair-
man clutched his yachting cap, placed it on his head, and
strode out to draft the wireless message.
Half an hour later Captain Baron gave the answer.
The " Rotterdam " could do nothing. She was less than
ten miles away from us, blanketed in mist, but every
stateroom was filled to bursting with Americans frantic
to get home, and Captain Stenger could give no aid to
the passengers on the " Nieuw Amsterdam." There was
CAPTURED AT SEA 13
nothing to do but to sail straight on into the jaws of the
British Lion— jaws which stretched from Cape Town
to Bergen — and chalked up on the bulletin-board beside
Captain Stenger's first marconigram appeared this warn-
ing:
Passengers will please pay their Wine Bills to the Head
Steward before leaving the Ship.
CAPTURED AT SEA
A dull echo of thunder awoke me. It was five
o'clock. The haze of early morning swam dizzily past
the clouded port-holes, so one could see nothing out-
side. An excited Teutonic voice began calling in the
passageway; then another and another. A child cried
out. Suddenly the engines stopped, and the ship slid for-
ward noiselessly except for the lapping of waves.
I tumbled out of my berth and ran upstairs, in pa-
jamas, dancing pumps, and overcoat. Others ahead of
me had made equally impromptu toilets and met each
new arrival with grim laughter and jests.
We were stopped, but were we captured? The thun-
derclap that woke me had been the sound of a shot fired
across our bows.
Standing on the slippery deck and clinging to the drip-
ping rail, we saw a passenger ship of about the tonnage
of the " Nieuw Amsterdam," with big red funnels and
black hull, slowly bearing down toward us. A gun or
two peered from her forecastle ; two large signal flags —
14 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
a white cross on a blue field and a blue-and-white checker-
board— the code which means " stop immediately " —
flew at her peak. A gull, the first we had seen for a
week, swung lazily in the level morning light between the
two ships, and a shark undulated alongside.
But what was the nationality of the stranger? I
looked twice for her flag and could hardly believe my
eyes. It was the tricolor of France !
" She's not British : she's French ! " I gasped to a Ger-
man beside me.
" Donnerwetter! " he groaned, " France ; not Eng-
land after all. It will be worse for us than if the Eng-
lish had captured us. This is the second of September
— Sedan Day — the anniversary of the battle where we
captured their Emperor. A bad day for us ! a very bad
day!"
The newcomer slid broadside to us. We could see
seven or eight guns pointing wickedly from between her
decks or from the bridge ; a moment more and we could
read her name : she was " La Savoie," a passenger ship
of the French Line, plying ordinarily between Havre and
New York.
On the boat-deck one of the Dutch marconi operators
was leaning over the rail behind a life-raft. His white,
angular profile was turned seaward, but he heard my
step and wheeled. To my astonishment his face was
radiant. "Good," he hissed exultantly; "Vive la
France! Vive la France; riest-ce pas? These damned
CAPTURED AT SEA 15
Germans are going to get what's coming to them. Why,
they've treated me like a dog, sir. They've bullied and
hectored and abused me, because I wouldn't tell them the
news. They'll cool their heels in prison while this war
lasts, I hope. Hurrah! Vive la France!"
A little white boat appeared at the side of the stranger
and was lowered rapidly to the water. Five minutes
later it was alongside the " Nieuw Amsterdam," and a
dainty French lieutenant, neat as a doll, in blue coat,
gold braid, and ceremonial sword, scampered up the
ship's ladder. Behind him climbed two tars who looked
like house-painters tricked out in white overalls and blue
sailor caps, and armed with pistols and cutlasses.
At first it was difficult to take the capture seriously.
The little lieutenant's sword got in his way, and he fell
flat on the fog-soaked deck to an accompaniment of gruff
chuckles from the German passengers. But he was on
his feet in an instant, and he took time on his way to
meet the Captain to remove his blue-and-gold cap and
bow gracefully to a pretty lady who was watching. Our
ship had been a man's world until that moment — the
reservists ignored women — but the first Frenchman who
met us restored womanhood to its gilded pedestal with
a single bow.
The conference in the Captain's office was brief. Our
papers were seized, the wireless apparatus was dis-
mantled, the marconi room sealed, and the ship and all
on her were declared prisoners of war. Captain Baron
16 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
was asked to leave his office and the bridge, and the
dainty little lieutenant assumed command.
The cutter next brought a detail of marines, armed
with rifles, fixed bayonets, and pistols thrust into wide
black belts. The armament was impressive, and it was
disquieting to think of the havoc one fool might cause;
but the faces and bearing of the marines were most
amiable.
It was not until evening, however, that we made a
startling and reassuring discovery regarding our warders.
My friend, Dr. van Loon, who was in constant demand
as interpreter, and who changed from English and
Dutch to German and French without shifting verbal
gears, was in quizzical conversation with the master at
arms in charge of the detail of marines — a fat, sedate
little Frenchman, wearing a huge medal for service in
Dahomey.
"Who are you?" he asked the Frenchman. "Who
are you, I mean, when you aren't capturing Dutch
steamers on the high seas ? "
" I am steward of ' La Savoie/ monsieur."
"You are what?"
" Head steward of ' La Savoie/ monsieur. I have
charge of the dining-room."
" Ye gods ! And what about these fellows you have
charge of here — these fellows with guns and bayo-
nets?"
" They are stewards, also, monsieur."
CAPTURED AT SEA 17
" Gott strafe stewards ! And do you do this sort of
thing often?"
" Pardon, monsieur? "
" Do you often capture ships and put prize crews on
board of them ? "
" Monsieur, I will tell you the truth ; you are our first
capture! But it is pleasant capturing ships; pleasanter
than being always a steward; n'est-ce pas?" And he
beamed amiably.
Morning passed, and still we lay where we had first
been arrested. " La Savoie " grimly circled round and
round us, trying to train all her seventeen guns on us at
once, but still we did not move. Wild rumors of our
fate spread like fire about the ship, but the little doll-like
lieutenant sat in the Captain's office and waited patiently.
" Why are we waiting? " he was asked.
" Orders from Paris, messieurs."
" Then where shall you take us? "
"I do not know." He shrugged his shoulders elo-
quently. " Maybe Cherbourg, maybe Brest."
" And how long will it take us to get to Cherbourg? "
"I do not know." Another shrug. "Maybe three
hours, maybe five hours, maybe twelve hours."
" For the Lord's sake ! And then what are you going
to do?"
" We take you off."
One of the German officers spoke up insolently. " Mon-
i8 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
sieur," he drawled, " Cherbourg is not far from Paris,
is it? We shall get there in time to join the German
armies marching in."
The lieutenant smiled placidly. "We take you off,"
he repeated. " Orders from Paris."
Days afterward we learned that during those heavy
hours when we lay at sea under the guns of "La
Savoie " Paris had ceased to be the capital of France.
The encircling Germans were close. Archives, records,
and the Government itself were removed to Bordeaux,
and the armies and the shell of Paris awaited the in-
vaders.
After noon we were ordered to proceed to Brest, so,
with " La Savoie " leading the way and covering us with
her wicked stern guns, we steamed slowly southward
over the summer sea. It was night when we anchored
off the harbor entrance. Through soft evening haze
two lighthouses winked drowsily at us, and a pale moon
looked down in sympathy. It had been a hard day. So
small a thing as the pounding of a salt-cellar on a table
in the dining-room at luncheon brought us to our feet
as if we were shot. Lame little Hans, clumping along
the deck, alone seemed untroubled by the general misery.
In the afternoon I strolled into the smoking-room to
find that haven of masculine comfort occupied by one
German, and he playing solitaire.
But the Dutch stewards and some of the crew seemed
actually to enjoy the situation. In a week the German
FLOATING MINES 19
passengers had made themselves almost universally un-
popular. They abused the stewards, quarreled with the
Captain and Purser, and wrangled among themselves.
They insisted on maintaining small, mutually hostile
groups, apparently based on military or nationalistic
lines. Hungarians, Austrians, Prussians, and Bavarians
flocked by themselves, but all united to despise our Dutch
hosts. In retaliation, the stewards were quick to strike
up acquaintance with their French guards, and at night,
as I passed the drying-room on Deck " C," I overheard
the tailor and his helper gaily whistling the " Marseil-
laise."
FLOATING MINES
At nine o'clock some of us were standing on the boat-
deck of the " Nieuw Amsterdam " when suddenly a
searchlight blazed out of the darkness and fingered
rapidly along our decks and superstructure. What
made the light most interesting was the fact that it was
borne over the water at extraordinary speed and in our
direction. It came like an express train in a vast and
splendid curve, probing us every instant with its calcium
glare, till ropes and spars and davits lay bare to its gaze.
The light was very close now, and we could see a vague
snaky hull and two small black stacks.
" Torpedo-boat ! " muttered a reservist.
The little craft tore along behind, then around us- all
the time examining us with her searchlight. Suddenly
20 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
the light snapped off, and we were left in Egyptian dark-
ness, straining our eyes after the vanished ship.
A few minutes more, and little bunched lights, like
clusters of fireflies, appeared in three directions at once
drawing toward us. They slid across the calm summer
sea like water-skaters across a pond, and there was some-
thing so ethereal, so ghostly about them that it seemed
impossible to imagine that they were instruments of
destruction. They ranged about us, two or three thou-
sand yards away. A hoarse voice began a megaphoned
conversation. Another voice coughed back a brief an-
swer. A glaring searchlight flashed on and examined
us again — nook and cranny, wireless apparatus and water-
line. Then the bunched lights began to flash off and on
in rhythmic order, changing colors as they flashed : red —
red — yellow — red — yellow — yellow. The torpedo-boats
were signaling.
One of them drew closer to us, and a megaphoned
voice retched out a query and was answered from our
bridge. The firefly lights flashed new signals; then the
boats ranged about us — one dead ahead, one astern, one
on either side — and the " Nieuw Amsterdam " steamed
forward.
" Damned little French rowboats ! " grunted a reser-
vist near me. "You should see our High Seas fleet,"
and he leaned across the rail and began to explain to me
the superiority of the German craft.
I left him abruptly and went to find the Captain, for
FLOATING MINES 21
an uncomfortable thought had just occurred to me and
I longed for confirmation of my fears. " We're going
over mine fields," I said to myself. "If one of the
mines has happened to get loose from its anchorage,
pfzzt — up we go! The night is black as ink, and there
are just four torpedo-boats to rescue more than a thou-
sand passengers and the crew ! "
"No. It is the other way round," said Captain
Baron.
" How do you mean? "
" The boot is on the other foot. It is not the French
mine to be afraid of, but the German mine. There are
no mines here at the entrance of the harbor of Brest, but
the French have found floating mines in the Bay of Bis-
cay, and they say German passengers on neutral vessels
have sown them.
' You have not a mine with you ? " He looked at me
smilingly. " That is good. The torpedo-boats turn their
searchlights on the ship for fear the Germans sow mines
here."
A tall, angular Prussian officer with whom I had struck
up an acquaintanceship joined me on the hurricane deck
to watch the ship's manoeuvring. His right cheek bore
the purple welts of rapier scars and he stood erect as a
pine tree, peering into the darkness ahead.
" It will soon be over," I said.
" Ja" he answered. After a pause, some shaft of feel-
22 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
ing seemed to pierce his temperamental armor-plate, and
he began to tell me of his experiences as an officer in
the German army. " Uhlan officer ten and one-half
year," he went on in English. " Now I am prisoner,
without the fight. It will be hard. It will be hard for
all, nichtf but most hard for me, I think. Harder
than for those others. You see, I am officer; I am in
the regular army ten and one-half year; nichtf The
others, they are only reserves. It do not matter for
them."
His face lightened suddenly with a new thought, and
he turned to me with animation. " But in prison I am
better off as them. I am officer, nichtf And in the
prison the German officer gets same pay as French offi-
cer in the battle. French officer in German prison, he
gets same pay. So I do not have to work. Maybe I
report once a day; write my name down on a paper.
The others must work. Not so bad for me, nichtf
"And not long, either. We take Paris, nichtf The
war is over in six weeks. Then we take London. Then
we sign the peace. A short war, nichtf"
" Perhaps," I said.
"If it is long, then I am better here as in England.
Brest is not so far from Paris. I know all France. I
escape from the prison, nichtf I get so to the German
army, and am officer of Uhlans. Achf that is fine, fine;
nichtf "
Half an hour later our flotilla had passed the black
INTERNED 23
cliffs on either side of the channel and was in the har-
bor. Like pinpricks of yellow light in a misty screen,
the distant city of Brest appeared. Passengers stood in
awed silence on the decks of the " Nieuw Amsterdam."
It was a cruel contrast with our departure from New
York, and we were full of fears and hopes and wonder.
Two young reservists leaned side by side against the
rail. They had their arms about each other, and once I
saw the younger rest his head for a moment on the
shoulder of the other. It was the only bit of tender-
ness I noticed during the time I was with the reservists.
We slid slowly on over the calm water. One by one
our torpedo-boat escorts flashed their signal lights for a
moment, and then made off into the darkness. Ahead
of us loomed the black bulk of " La Savoie " at anchor.
We moved slowly toward her; then around to one side.
The propeller ceased churning. There came a yell from
the bridge, " ' L'ancrel", the splash of a heavy weight
and the wrenching grind of chains as they slid over
the side. Then silence fell, and we lay at rest in the
moonlight near the black silhouette of our captor, under
the guns of Brest and prison.
INTERNED
After the cool freedom of the voyage the confinement
and midsummer heat of the harbor were almost unen-
durable. There was nothing to do but walk and talk.
We were reduced to a democracy of misery. All morn-
24 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
ing long a snaky blue-black torpedo-boat circled about
us, and flotillas of destroyers and submarines glided past
on their way to the open sea. Guns peered down from
fortifications fringing the hills above the harbor, the
seven picturesque Norman towers of Brest suggested
nothing but prison walls and donjon keeps, and on the
decks of the " Nieuw Amsterdam " stood groups of
dour-faced marines and gendarmes, for the ex-stewards
of "La Savoie" had been replaced by stout Breton
guardsmen. We were prisoners, and we were made to
feel it.
Immediately after noon we were notified to prepare
to leave the ship at once. Only Dutch citizens and the
women, of whatever nationality, were to remain on
board.
All restraints melted away. A Bedlam of emotions
seized the passengers. No one in the ship was sane.
Frantic women walked the decks weeping, and the lips
of many men were bleeding, half-bitten through in the
effort to keep back curses and tears. Our ship and all
her cargo were said to be confiscated; Holland was
rumored to be on the verge of war with France; the
women were reported to be prisoners of war like the men
and were to be interned in a Breton fishing village until
the end of the war. Under orders from the French offi-
cers in charge of the ship Dutch stewards herded the
male passengers on deck and left them, surrounded with
hand-luggage. Some wrote farewell letters, resting the
INTERNED 25
paper on their knees or on the backs of valises. The
few whose wives were on board were half -crazed with
horror at thought of the inevitable separation, and, what
made it hardest to bear, the women were penned in the
dining-room where they could not see the disembarka-
tion.
The steerage passengers went first, climbing down the
ship's ladder to a military tugboat crammed with French
gendarmes and sailors. One by one the men were
searched, and their pocket knives, matches, razors, and
other small possessions taken from them and dumped into
wicker baskets. Their hand-luggage was passed hand
over hand to a barge, and then the men were marched
into another bateau, where they sat crowded together on
benches or in the bottom of the boat. Awkward immi-
grant bags, an English horn, a 'cello, and a phonograph
lay in the sprawling heaps of impedimenta. The men
kept up bravely, and when the tug panted off down the
Bay, towing the two barges, the captives cheered and
waved their hats to those still on the ship.
A wailing shriek from the dining-room suddenly
startled us. One of the steerage women, mother of six
small children, had fainted at separation from her hus-
band. She, like most of the women, believed the men
were to be taken to the nearest landing-place and shot
down by the French. She had come expecting to have
her husband's pay while he was in the army, or to have
his pension if he fell. There was nothing for her in
26 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
America; there was less than nothing for her and her
children in Holland, where they would be landed penni-
less and friendless if the ship were allowed to proceed.
And her plight was the plight of a score of others. But
the men on deck could do nothing. They were drowned
in their own misery.
Among the second-cabin passengers was a German
Lutheran minister about sixty years old, who staggered
down the ladder painfully dragging a big hand-bag be-
hind him. Gendarmes stepped forward to search him
like the rest, but the Captain stopped them with a word,
and then eloquently waved the old man to a seat on a
coil of rope; not in the barge, but in the tug with the
French officers.
Our time came. We marched slowly down the stair;
down under the sweetly smiling face of Queen Wil-
helmina, powerless to protect those who travel under her
flag; down past the frantic women in the dining-room,
crowded to the doors, sobbing and calling good-bys;
down past the stewards, even in those tragic moments
anxious only for their tips; down to the French officers
who were to decide our fate. Each of us had grown
colossally selfish. The only problem which mattered
was, " What are they going to do with ME ? "
Five of us were American citizens. We had little in
common but our citizenship, yet that bond suddenly bo-
came stronger than anything else in the world. We kept
close together as we marched down the stair. We were
A NIGHT ON DEVIL'S ISLAND 27
determined to fight the matter out as a group. We were
free-born Americans, we told ourselves. We were not
to be ordered off any ship. We would go when we were
ready, and not an instant before. We would fight, if
necessary. Those Frenchmen would have to take us off
at the bayonet's point, if they took us at all ! . . . It was
all very childish, no doubt.
The foremost officer looked quickly at our papers,
bowed courteously, and waved us back. " You are not
to go, gentlemen," he said.
We ran back upstairs in a frenzy of selfish joy. It
was like a reprieve from a sentence of death; as unex-
pected and as precious. We were a handful of lonely
passengers now. Already the barges were moving away,
and the prisoners were calling good-bys and waving.
The women were released from the dining-room and re-
joined us on the deck. Half an hour later the barges
were little sooty specks moving far out across the blue
waters of the Bay, and on the topmost deck were a dozen
women and nine-year old Hans watching them out of
sight.
A NIGHT ON DEVIL'S ISLAND
The French declared our cargo contraband, so that one
million dollars' worth of silver bullion, consigned to the
Dutch Government, large quantities of flour and tinned
meat, and perhaps other supplies, had to be removed- be-
fore the ship could proceed. All day we watched the
28 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
green- jacketed Dutch crew helping French marines to
transfer flour from the hold of the " Nieuw Amster-
dam " to the deck of a barge appropriately named " Le
Corbeau" — the Crow. The blazing September sun
smote us like fists from the surface of a painted sea and
sky; the green Breton hills and the Norman towers of
Brest were an agony of invitation to the eye, but we
could not set foot on shore; we could not see a news-
paper; we could not communicate with the American
Ambassador in Paris, and there was no American Con-
sul to whom we could appeal in Brest. The women were
forbidden to write to the German prisoners. Yet sud-
denly, from no one knew where, came news.
" They were taken to Devil's Island. One was shot
on the way. A French marine said so!" Rumor, like
a hot wind, ran through the groups on the ship,
As the day waned, a second barge drew alongside the
" Nieuw Amsterdam." We watched its approach in-
differently, when suddenly there came a woman's wail,
horrible as keening for the dead. " My husband is
there ! " she screamed. " My husband is in that barge !
He is there! He has come back! He has come back!
Oh, why has he come back? What are the French go-
ing to do with him? " Her hysteria swept all the passen-
gers. Women crowded the ship's rail, sobbing and call-
ing, and men standing in the barge beneath answered
and waved their handkerchiefs.
We waited breathlessly. Seven hundred and fifty-one
A NIGHT ON DEVIL'S ISLAND 29
Germans and Austrians had been taken from the ship.
How many were to be returned? Or were any to be
returned? We could only wait. Then five old men and
a boy of seventeen staggered to the deck, and we fell
upon them with questions. " Where are the others ? "
we demanded. Only the boy had strength to answer,
" They are at Devil's Island — all but the officers and Red
Cross doctors. Those are down in the barge on their
way to the penitentiary in the city of Brest. Thirty-two
officers ; five doctors."
A clamor of farewells arose from the barge, for the
tugboat was puffing away. The mad wailing began
again, and the horrible tragedy of separation was played
a second time to the end.
One of the old men who was returned to the ship was
a veteran member of the Hungarian Parliament and had
been in America just before the war broke out, repre-
senting the International Peace movement. It was bit-
ter irony that such a man should be prisoner of war.
He was more than sixty years old, big, spiny, and un-
couth, with a skin like a sun-dried cactus. He returned
to us unshaven, dirty, so exhausted that he could not
stand without support, and with his wide eyes fixed and
terrible. We helped him to a steamer-chair, and he told
in short, apoplectic gasps of what had happened to the
prisoners.
" They took us to le Fret/' he began; "a fishing vil-
30 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
lage. It is in the Bay. We were unloaded two by two.
French fisherwomen came and cursed us. They shook
their fists. But there was no violence — not yet. Then
a man was shot. He was a German Pole. A steerage
passenger. He carried a little satchel with all his money
in it. The French officer shouted to him to drop the
satchel with the rest of the luggage. The Pole held on.
Maybe he did not understand French. Fisherwomen
crowded up very close and yelled ' Shoot him ! Shoot
him!' Still he held on. The officer tried to jerk the
satchel from him, but he held on. Then the officer cried
out very loud, and they shot him four times.
" After the shooting I saw his body lying in the road-
way, but he still held his little satchel.
" Then we were marched four miles, very fast. The
younger men could do it, but the old men ! One was
a Lutheran minister, sixty-one years old, very heavy,
and he soon had to stop. The soldiers drove him on.
Then two of our young men caught him by the arms
and dragged him with them. But the old man seemed
to be dying, so the young men left him in the road.
" It was dark when we had done our four miles. In
front of us was a black fortress named Crozon and a
causeway over the sea. We had to run into the fort.
We were told off into squads of sixty-six and put into
bomb-proof steel and concrete caves in the bottom of the
fortress. Then they locked us in.
" There was no light. The vault was air-tight except
A NIGHT ON DEVIL'S ISLAND 3I
for two small windows. It was ninety feet long, eighteen
feet wide, and seventeen and one-half feet high. The
windows were two feet by three and one-half feet high,
heavily barred with six railroad irons. It was horrible !
" There was straw on the floor. Nothing else. The
air at first was stale. It soon became moist and foul.
A man died. Another man was dying when we left the
fortress today. Some of the men fought to reach the
windows, until we organized ourselves into squads of
tens and marched up in turn to the windows to gulp a
clean breath. We marched all night long. It was pitch
dark in the vault and very dirty. The night was hot.
The stenches grew more and more frightful. . . .
There are things I cannot tell you. You must imagine.
We were there twenty-one hours, and the others are
there yet.
" They call it ' L'Ue du Diable '— Devil's Island."
Days dragged by on leaden feet. Captain Baron made
formal protest against the seizure of the " Nieuw Am-
sterdam," but still we were held. He twice visited Brest
under guard to interview the Dutch Consul there, but the
city was a chaos of suffering. Belgian refugees begged
in all the streets; women were in mourning; fifteen
hundred wounded Frenchmen arrived there in a single
day, and were hastily crowded into the small municipal
hospitals. People lived in hourly expectation of the fall
of Paris and the retreat of the French armies to the
32 A VOYAGE IN WARTIME
south and west. An atmosphere of tragic depression
had seized on every one, so that it was impossible to
learn anything definite regarding the final disposition of
the ship.
The reservists and other German and Austrian citizens
were interned on September third; the flour was re-
moved on the fourth; three hundred and ninety massive
bars of silver, valued at more than a million dollars, were
taken on the fifth; the maizena was seized on the sixth,
along with six hundred tins of meat; and still no de-
cision had been taken so far as the ship was concerned.
Then came the magic " orders from Paris." Five
German Red Cross doctors were returned to the ship,
and we sailed at six o'clock in the evening of Septem-
ber sixth.
On the morning of the eighth we were in Rotterdam.
Our mails were five days late, and we were the poorer
by a million dollars' worth of silver, and a cargo of flour,
meat, and maizena. Out of about eight hundred Ger-
mans and Austrians, there remained only twenty-six to
report to their consuls in Holland. Some of these were
of military age. One of them was a German Doctor of
Philosophy, who stowed himself in a lifeboat and lived
there for five days on ship's biscuit and water; another
hid himself in a small hollow in the ship's walls, and al-
though he had lived four and one-half days without
food or water seemed none the worse for his experience ;
others had traveled with Scandinavian or Swiss or
A NIGHT ON DEVIL'S ISLAND 33
American passports, several of them being bond fide
Americans citizens who wanted to volunteer in Germany,
and so escaped the French.
Seven hundred and forty were left as prisoners of war
in Brest.
CHAPTER II
BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
OSNABRUCK TO BERLIN
" WHY did you Germans destroy Louvain ? "
" Louvain ? " said the man from Mannheim. " Re-
member Heidelberg! War is war."
"Heidelberg?" I recalled vaguely that over a hun-
dred years ago the German university town was burned
by the French. "What has Heidelberg to do with it?
This is the twentieth century."
" The twentieth century has grown from the nine-
teenth, and the nineteenth from the eighteenth, and the
eighteenth from the seventeenth, and the seventeenth
from the sixteenth. You must think in centuries to un-
derstand Germany."
"Sub specie czternitatis! " I sneered, quoting Spi-
noza's famous phrase. " Under the form of eternity ;
eh?"
We were riding to Berlin on a military train which
had come directly from the battlefields in France. A
heavy smell of ether drenched all that one breathed, and
waxen-faced soldiers, unshaven and dirty, crammed the
34
OSNABRUCK TO BERLIN 35
little compartments. There was no distinction among
first-, second-, and third-class passengers.
A splendid young Uhlan wearing a wisp of mustache
leaned negligently against a compartment-door, his spur
scratching the panel. The front of his green-gray uni-
form was a clotted mass of what seemed to be brick
dust: it was dried blood. Infantrymen with bandaged
heads, bandaged arms, bandaged legs or bandaged shoul-
ders, blocked the narrow aisles and lay on the floor be-
tween the seats. A soldier with his jaw shot through
breathed noisily. Occasionally some one groaned through
clenched teeth as he shifted his position.
These men were only slightly wounded. . . .
The man from Mannheim had never heard of Spinoza,
but he knew his Kant and Karl Marx and the new
Freud psychology. " You must think in centuries to un-
derstand Germany," he repeated doggedly.
At every station, women from the Red Cross came to
meet the soldiers with hot bouillon, hot coffee, stretchers,
and ambulances; and at almost every station we picked
up new recruits, mostly officers, just being called to the
colors. They came in brand-new uniforms with shining
swords at their sides, invariably accompanied by friends
who cheered them and called, " Bravo ! bravo ! congratu-
lations ! " as the train pulled out of the station.
In Hanover two women, who seemed to be mother
and wife of a young hussar just starting for the front,
36 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
were at the station to see him off. He was all smiles,
but the women were in agony. They fought to keep
their self-possession. The mother's fingers clawed holes
in the handkerchief she held in her hand to wave as her
boy left her, and the wife's lips trembled as she tried to
say the happy nothings which would be everything in
the world to her soldier in the field. They smiled to
the very last minute, and when the train started and the
young officer leaned far out of the window, laughing
back at them and waving his handkerchief, they shouted
after him, " Congratulations ! congratulations ! God
bless you ! Congratulations ! " . . .
The man from Mannheim sighed heavily. " Genera-
tion after generation they have done that in Germany:
century after century. Do you understand ? "
There was an air of heroic happiness about our train.
Every time another train passed we were cheered and
waved at; car-windows flew open; men, women, and
even children leaned out, calling, waving, and smiling —
always smiling. Factories and canals were idle, but the
land was alive. Everywhere peasant women, in bright
red, green, or yellow costumes, worked in the rich har-
vests. Children, even six-year-old youngsters, picked up
potatoes. Baby-carriages were common conveyances.
Two troop-trains went by us, west-bound for France,
and their loud " hurrrrrrahs " were electric with feeling.
Little boys, dressed in diminutive uniforms, perfect
OSNABRUCK TO BERLIN 37
even to spiked helmets and miniature swords, hung
from the windows of houses to shake German flags in
salute, and little girls in the turnip and potato fields
called shrilly as we went by. It was a continuous ova-
tion. To come home wounded was to come in triumph,
and ether and bandages and painful mutilations were
forgotten in the joy of such a welcome.
So we reached Berlin. The broad platforms of the
Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof were crowded with eager men
and women awaiting the arrival of our train. It was a
confusion of laughter, happy tears, the tight grip of
hands, smiles, furtive touching of the weeks' growth of
beard on military chins, men kissing men, and shouts of
" Gepdcktrdger! Gepdcktrdger!" The porters — forty-
five, fifty, sixty years old, all of them — hobbled about
collecting the luggage. Red Cross workers crowded up
to take charge of the wounded. Soldiers, in every
variety of uniform, stood waiting for other trains; some
of them in neat, clean, brand-new outfits with yellow
boots that squeaked as they walked, and with sprigs of
green in their gun-barrels ; others, just back from the bat-
tles in East Prussia, in muddy, war-worn uniforms
which they had fought in and slept in and traveled in
without change, knapsacks on their shoulders, rifles at
their hips. It was a crowd shifting like quicksilver, and
every face smiling. Even the sixteen-year-old Spree-
wald Mddchen in charge of the news-stand laid down
her knitting to watch.
38 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
Among the first to leap down from the train was a
tall Prussian Uhlan on furlough. He had been fighting
under von Hindenburg in the East and von Kluck in the
West, he told us. " Such luck ! " as he expressed it. He
bounded to the platform like an athlete, although I knew
he was wounded; stood stiff for a moment, clicked his
heels, saluted with an abrupt mechanical snap of the
forearm which is the very perfection of impersonal, un-
emotional recognition ; then flung his arms out like a lit-
tle boy about the shoulders of a gray-bearded giant in
general's uniform, and kissed him like a girl.
That nineteen-year-old boy wore over his heart the
Iron Cross of 1914. The man he kissed wore the Iron
Cross of 1 870*7 1. . * .
"His father^ his grandfather, his great-grandfather
and great great-grandfather fought the French. We
Germans remember in centuries," the man from Mann-
heim said.
PRUSSIA ENTHRONED
Consciousness of history seemed the most vivid feature
of wartime Germany. Men talked of the religious wars
of three centuries ago as if they had been fought in our
lifetime. They talked of Napoleon as of a contempo-
rary, and of the sorrows of the medieval and modern
Germanic states with the fervor and poignant suffering
of a citizen of those bygone days. Jean Paul Richter
PRUSSIA ENTHRONED 39
or Theodor Korner have not painted the humiliations of
old Germany with more skill and feeling than the Ger-
man-on-the-street in 1914. It was like a loyal son
telling of the sufferings and hardships of a devoted
mother.
One pleasant afternoon I called on Baron von
Nimptsch, president of the Berlin branch of the New
York Life Insurance Company, in his offices at the
corner of Leipzigerstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse.
:< You cannot understand our militarism ? " he asked.
" Listen ! Century after century the Fatherland of the
Germans was fought over, burned over, plundered and
pillaged over, from the time of Caesar until Prussia
emerged to lead the Germanic Federation. Germany's
trade history is a long history. It is no nineteenth cen-
tury discovery. The Hanseatic merchants of Hamburg,
Bremen, and Liibeck were famous when the English
still were pirates. During the Thirty Years' War, from
1618 to 1648, Germany's population fell from nineteen
millions to four millions. Before that war we Germans
had a culture higher than France or England. Every
vestige of it was lost. That is the explanation of our
militarism.
"A century ago came Napoleon. The city of
Konigsberg only recently paid off the last of the assess-
ments levied on her in Napoleon's day. That is the 'ex-
planation of our militarism.
40 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
" The thought of a helpless Germany is intolerable to
Germans. To survive at all, we have to be strong. To
survive at all, we have to give up what you Americans
call your ' personal liberty.* We must obey. We must
organize. We must be ready to fight for our lives and
the life of our country. And that is German militarism."
A few nights later I was guest at a weekly meeting
of one of the innumerable artistic circles of Berlin —
one of the little groups of painters, sculptors, and their
friends who meet on Friday evenings about long tables
in Charlottenburg for beer and conversation. Some of
the men and women about me bore famous names; all
had amiable, healthy, florid faces ; all were cosmopolitans
by education and training. The men were over military
age.
" Prosit \ " said my host.
Twelve of us lifted our mugs and drank solemnly.
My nearest neighbor glanced at me and frowned.
" Germans observe measure in everything," he said re-
provingly ; " even in drinking beer. The first drink
should empty the mug down to the hasp of the handle;
the second to the boss of the mug; the third to the bot-
tom. You have only sipped your beer."
I liked the idea of classic measure in beer drinking,
and we discussed it solemnly. " Measure is everything.
Restraint. The * golden mean/ Order. Discipline.
That is the German way," they said, when a clenched
PRUSSIA ENTHRONED 41
fist struck the table beside me a tremendous thump. My
beer splashed from the mug, and the crackers flew. The
fist descended again and again, and an agonized voice
repeated " Nein! Nein! Gottl It cannot be! It cannot
be!"
" What is it? What has happened? " I asked.
" One of our friends, a sculptor, a member of this
Circle. We have just heard that he has been killed. He
volunteered three weeks ago."
The group buzzed with unhappy conjecture. " It is
horrible! Horrible! Ein bildlicher Mensch, a German
genius, shot down by the Cossack, the Jap, the Indian,
the Nigger. This is England's work. Oh, it is horri-
ble! Horrible!"
I realized with unpleasant astonishment that German
discipline and restraint hid oceans of vast, wild feeling,
uncritical and elemental; that the intellectual and phys-
ical order of the Empire was built upon these.
" See ! " The man at my right drew a pencil from his
pocket and nervously sketched on the tablecloth a little
map. " It is very small, our civilization," he explained.
" Here is Germany, and Scandinavia, Holland, England,
America. That is all. France and Italy have another
culture. Theirs is Latin ; it is decaying. All the rest of
the world is barbarisch. The Russians, the Japanese,
Africa, Spain, South America— all that is barbarisch.
There is only this little island of our civilization, and we
are fighting to the death to save it."
42 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
"But France?" I remonstrated. "The whole world
loves France."
" France ? — la grande nation is always hysterical.
Think only of the Caillaux trial. On July twenty-sixth
the French newspapers talked of nothing but that dirty
case; one week later we were at war. In France every-
thing is done with uproar and outcry — immer mit Ge-
schrei. One morning in Paris I was awakened by horrid
noises in the street. Men screamed and fought. They
ran in and out of the hotel. They bawled from the win-
dows. They cursed and wrestled on the sidewalks, and
howled — immer mit Geschrei. It was all because an
Englishman had won the Gordon Bennett cup ! "
" And Italy ? " A strapping, sunburned artist at the
far end of the table took up the story. He had come
that day from Rome. " Italy is a kindergarten full of
naughty children. They sob and squall and squabble
like four-year olds.
" A few nights ago in a Roman restaurant an Italian
soldier jumped to his feet in the midst of the dinner and
cried, ' Viva I' It alia! Viva la Serbia! Viva la Francia!
Viva I'lngleterra! — our friends! Down with the
Tedeschi! Down with the barbarous Germans ! '
" I arose," the artist continued. " I took a table nearer
the speaker, and when the excitement had died down I
stood up close to him and called on all the other Ger-
mans in the room to stand. A dozen big, muscular fel-
lows got up. They were splendid!
PRUSSIA ENTHRONED 43
"'What do you think now, Signer Soldier?' I cried
to the disturber.
" * Ah, pardon, pardon, Signor ! I did not mean it !
I did not know ! '
" So the little fool apologized/' the narrator ended
contemptuously.
They had spoken of Frenchmen and Italians as a
Southern colonel might speak of negroes. It was not
simply the historical antagonism between Romantic and
Teutonic peoples, it was the physical feeling of repulsion
which a Southerner feels in discussing racial amalgama-
tion.
In fertile ground like this the war spirit grew un-
checked. The theaters played to crowded houses, and
the theme was always war. "Die Waff en her!"
" Deutschland uber dies!" " Kriegsbilden" "Mem
Leben dem Vaterland" " Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott"
Schiller's " Wdlenstein's Tod/' and " Wilhelm Tell,"
were advertised on all the pillar posts, and I heard at
the Deutsches Opernhaus the first performance of Engel-
bert Humperdinck's opera " Die Marktenderin," with the
old Prussian Marshal Bliicher as hero.
The famous theatrical manager, Max Reinhardt,
wished to produce Shakespeare, but considering the in-
tense bitterness of feeling against England and things
English he laid the matter before the German public -for
arbitrament. The Berliner Tageblatt of Sunday, Sep-
44 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
tember twenty-seventh, was favored with the following
letters :
" Shakespeare belongs to the whole world."
CHANCELLOR VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG.
" First, we are fighting the living and not the dead.
Second, the majority of men's masterpieces belong to the
whole world of culture and not exclusively to their father-
land. Third, Shakespeare especially has for more than a
century been so far incorporated in our German flesh and
blood that we may consider him our own. Proof: any
production of Max Reinhardt's."
Burgermeister Geheimrat GEORG REICKE.
How THE POOR FARED
But Germany's racial and historical dogmas tired me
by their reiteration. All men thought alike, all men
spoke alike. The intellectual mobilization was too per-
fect. I longed for revolt and self-criticism, so I tele-
phoned to the Reichstag to Dr. Karl Liebknecht, the
famous Socialist leader, to whom I had letters, in order
to make an engagement with him to talk over the Social-
ist situation.
The gentle-voiced telephone operator interrupted me.
" Sie miissen aber Deutsch sprechen, Herr. Es ist ver-
boten English zu sprechen."
" I beg pardon, Fraulein" I answered lamely ; " but
I don't speak German very well "
Her answer was in perfect English. " Perhaps I can
translate for you, sir," she said coldly. . . .
HOW THE POOR FARED 45
Twenty minutes later a police-detective visited my
room to examine my passports and papers. He was pro-
fuse in his apologies for disturbing me, and bowed him-
self out with deep regret for the trouble he had caused
me.
The incident rankled. "Why is it?" I demanded of
Herr Nicholas Arps, as we walked down the Dorotheen-
strasse on our way to visit soup kitchens. "Why
do you Germans submit to so much police interfer-
ence?"
His delicate face, with the deeply graven lines about
the dark eyes and mouth, looked at the moment like a
saint's carved from wood in the confession-stall of a
cathedral. Like thousands of sensitive men in all lands,
the war was visibly breaking him to pieces. He suffered
night and day from horrible dreams. He wanted to go
as a volunteer, but his weak heart made that impossible.
Besides, he was over the age-limit. But he shouldered
a rifle daily and stood from one o'clock until five, guard-
ing a railroad bridge in Charlottenburg.
" We must have police. We must obey. We trust our
Government because it is wiser than we and because it
does better for us than we can do for ourselves. That
is what you will see today in the soup kitchens. Your
country is so different from ours that you do not yet
understand the virtue of obedience. We must have
police; we must have soldiers.
" But where is a policeman now ? " he added. " We
46 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
must ask our way to the Kinder-V olkskuchen. Do you
see a policeman?"
There was no blue-coat in sight, and I could not re-
member having seen one since I had left the hotel. We
were in the midst of the old Ghetto of Berlin — a place
so clean that it shone, but the poorest part of the city.
In New York, it would have swarmed with police. . . .
The Jews were preparing for their New Year, and all
about us was activity and a happy stir.
" See the prices for food and clothing," said Herr
Arps.
"They are lower than in Holland or America," I
said, and I told him laughingly of my trunk ful of
Erbsenwurst, condensed soups, and egg powder, which
I had brought from America for fear I should starve
in Germany. I could have bought them more cheaply in
Berlin than in New York. ..." But we must find the
way to the Kinder-V olkskuchen"
We questioned several passersby. None could tell us
where the children of the poor could receive free meals
thrice a day. The need, apparently, was not great.
Block after block we walked where formerly stood the
most hateful rookeries in Germany. There are no
slums in Berlin. Everywhere were clean, wide streets,
tenements with open courtyards so sunlight and air could
reach all the windows, and window-boxes of asters and
geraniums to brighten the view. We wandered past the
unfinished theater which the German Socialists are
HOW THE POOR FARED 47
building— the Neue Freie Folksbiihne—a marvelous
monument by, for, and of the working-people; made
without a penny of help from the upper classes.
" There are no more Socialists now," said Herr Arps.
"There are only Germans."
" And I am half inclined to think there are no more
policemen," I retorted. " That one who visited me this
morning was the last of his race."
' There has been a marked decrease in crime since the
war began."
"So?"
" But it is strange that we cannot find a policeman."
An awkward squad was drilling behind a high board
fence, and a sharp, high-pitched voice shouted orders.
Over a little butcher-shop was an advertisement of fresh
horse cutlets. The pillar posts at street corners adver-
tised theatrical offerings and what seemed an endless
series of educational advantages: trade schools, night
schools, art schools, manual training schools, technical
schools, kindergartens — all as if it were peace time.
But everywhere one felt the presence of the paternal
Prussian state. The awkward squad consisted of the
raw material from which the Imperial armies are made ;
the butcher-shop was regulated by the State; the the-
atrical offerings were censored by the State; the schools
were subsidized and coerced by the State. The Kaiser's
photograph, and cheap post-cards of Kaiser, Kaiserin,
48 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
Crown Prince, Bismarck, Hindenburg, Hasler, and
Zeppelin were in almost every window. Confectionery
shops were arsenals of sweets, where candies shaped like
cannon balls, shot, cartridges, bullets, and packed in
boxes decorated with the national black-white-and-red,
or made in odd shapes like Uhlans' helmets or forty-two
centimeter shells, could be bought at astonishingly low
prices.
It was nearly half an hour before we caught sight of
the familiar blue uniform of a guardian of law and
order. He knew exactly where we should go; in fact,
he took us to the door. On the way we remarked on
the lack of police protection. " Yes," he said, " the peo-
ple are good. We do not need so many policemen. Ger-
mans are comrades and brothers."
The Kinder-V olkskuche was about an open courtyard,
behind a diminutive lawn decked with formal flower-
beds. Its dining-room was tiny but immaculate. Only
eight children were being served as we talked. The
women in charge explained that there was provision for
many more, but there was no need. " It is as in peace
time," they said.
In a nearby beer garden, beside a huge brewery, we
found a Red Cross soup kitchen for adults. One hun-
dred and fifty men, women, and children stood in line at
the door, where a volunteer worker passed them inside.
The children and some of the women carried pitchers in
which to take the provisions home. Most of the adults
HOW THE POOR FARED 49
ate inside. They were surprisingly neat and clean ; their
pressing poverty obviously was new. Yet I learned that
sixty thousand were then being fed in Berlin, and that
in peace time the number is about thirty thousand.
Upstairs we went with the line of the destitute. Each
of the women and most of the men bore with them little
books in which stamps were affixed for every day the
man of the house had been at work. The day when the
stamps left off was usually the day when charity began,
for the poor have no opportunity to lay up reserves in
Germany or anywhere else. They accepted the prof-
fered help cheerfully and as their just due, without ob-
sequiousness.
The director of the soup kitchen was Herr Held, a
Reichstag deputy; big-boned, healthily florid, and as
proud of the kitchen as a father of his household. His
helpers were women volunteers. In Germany the role
played by women of the leisure classes did not seem im-
portant. Knitting for the soldiers, nursing, and amateur
relief work alone seemed to be allowed them. Herr
Held and his assistants ate with the soup line, and Herr
Arps and I joined them at a little table with a heaping
platter of liver hash, boiled potatoes, a thick slice of
bread, and a glass of water.
" But you have no police here," I remarked.
Herr Held beamed at me as he dipped into his hash.
" Not since the beginning of the war," he said. " See,
all is clean and quiet and orderly. We have forty-five
50 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
hundred people every day, but never a disturbance. That
is because of the war. Rich and poor, we are one; all
Germany is one ; there are no more Socialists ; there are
no more revolutionists. Germans all are sisters and
brothers/*
WAR WORSHIP
Berlin, the flat-faced, heavy, portentous parvenu
among cities, was completely possessed by the devil of
war. The mark of the sword was on everything.
Among the quiet, serious crowds which thronged the
downtown streets during afternoons and evenings, and
which overflowed into a few uptown avenues, every
fifth man was a soldier. And the civilians never tired
of the sight. They paid each uniform the flattering at-
tention of staring as if it were the first they had ever
seen. There was worship in their eyes. All sorts and
conditions of men strode by in uniform: Prussian gen-
erals, in gold and gray and blue; a haggard military
doctor, just come from the hospitals and still smelling of
ether; dirty, tired infantrymen, just back from the firing-
line in East Prussia, limping along in the gutter; a
Jdger in Alpine green uniform, with a green feather in
his peaked cap ; aristocratic hussars in uniforms of blaz-
ing red, marching along erect as automatic dolls ; an offi-
cer of the famous Death's Head Hussars, a white skull
grinning down from his black shako, and the cords across
his breast pulsing as he walked ; companies of drab, mid-
WAR WORSHIP 5I
die-aged Landsturm marching down the street; a crack
regiment of the Guard doing the " goosestep " at the cor-
ner of Unter den Linden, and smacking the pavement un-
til the streets echoed like a forest under volley fire; a
squad of Red Cross workers marching in civil dress, each
wearing his little white-and-red arm-band and each carry-
ing a tiny satchel ; cavalrymen riding by like centaurs on
coal-black horses ; a new regiment off for the railway sta-
tion, with band blaring and colors snapping in the wind ;
an adjutant in a gray military automobile with a horn that
boomed like a cannon ; wax-faced convalescents, by, ones,
twos, half-dozens, dozens, walking the streets to get the
air, limping painfully or guarding a bandaged arm or
shoulder or head from the jostlings of the crowd. Then,
like a travesty of all these, twenty small boys, in impro-
vised uniforms, with spiked caps, wooden swords, and
an ingenious wooden cannon mounted on a gun-carriage
which would lower and raise and pivot about like a real
field-gun, marching down the Friedrichstrasse with
patriotic flags and a drum.
If two soldiers talked together in the street, they im-
mediately attracted a circle of respectful listeners. If a
single soldier walked along in the gutter where the side-
walks were overcrowded he was made immediately the
cynosure of all eyes. Street-cleaners and 'bus-drivers
made way for the soldier ; pedestrians nudged each other
to give him room; in the restaurants he was given the
best place. And all these attentions seemed to be un~
52 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
conscious; certainly they were ungrudging. They were
given as if the German soldier were obviously a superior
order of being.
I was walking down Dorotheenstrasse one morning
when I saw the street crowds gathered on the curbs and
looking upward. There was a soft purring sound in the
air — a new theme introducing itself into the staccato
music of the traffic — but the sea-blue sky was empty.
Then I saw the German army of the air. A tre-
mendous amber-colored nose pushed its way across the
heavens, thousands of feet above our narrow canyon of
street. The nose became a face — eyeless, mouthless, ex-
pressionless— but still a face. The face became a head,
and the head a great golden body, like the woodcuts of
Leviathan in old family Bibles; then the Zeppelin sailed
into full view.
A Bavarian soldier standing beside me turned his
head away and caught my eye. His face was radiant
with happiness. He grabbed me impulsively by the
shoulder. " God ! " he said, and I know the oath was
a prayer; " It's beautiful! It's beautiful! And you can
bet your life it will blow hell out of anything the Eng-
lish have!"
One night I was walking near the Dom — the mon-
strous cathedral which stands opposite the Kaiser's
palace — when I noticed a large crowd gathered about one
of the exits. At least five thousand men and women
A war game in Berlin.
Attacking the trenches.
YOUNG GERMANY
GERMAN " PREPAREDNESS " 53
were thronged on the marble steps, overflowing on to
the sidewalks and streets, and all standing in absolute
silence, waiting. Their faces were turned toward the
church porch, where the big yellow eyes of a waiting au-
tomobile stared out at them from beneath a marble arch-
way.
There was a stir in the dusk of the porch. An auto-
mobile horn, deep-toned as the bass in a cathedral organ,
boomed out, and the car began to move down upon us.
The crowd slowly made way. Men bared their heads,
still silent. A large woman, veiled to the eyes, sat
in the tonneau, bowing stiffly to right and left as the
car crawled down the drive.
" Die Kaiserin — the Empress," whispered a woman in
front of me, never taking her eyes off the figure in the
car. A moment later, and the crowd was dispersing as
quietly as it had assembled.
There had been no display of enthusiasm ; not so much
as a cheer. It might have been a religious procession
which had passed. The Empress had been like Augusta
to the temple, praying for the success of the German
arms.
GERMAN " PREPAREDNESS "
To such a people its army was an instrument, keying
up the machinery of civilization, giving direction and
purpose to myriads of whirring wheels. The army was
54 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
an essential part of a conscious universe of order,
a universe in which civilized society has con-
stant drastic work to do, the work we call " civiliza-
tion."
Against such a background, war was a world grown
plastic ; but wars were only recurring incidents in history.
The killing, the maiming, the robbery and rape were
only a small part of warfare. Relatively few had even
the chance to become beasts. Relatively few actually
served on the fighting-line. Wars are actually fought
by minorities; wars are made by whole peoples.
The mobilization and drilling of noncombatants was
just as important to the German mind as the drilling of
soldiers. The whole strength of the people must be
thrown into the balance. The Germans launched armies
as one launches ships, full of profound faith that they
would return to port bearing all that the nation desired.
Even their jingoism seemed moral. They shared none
of the common Anglo-Saxon feelings that war is a dirty
business, soon to be finished, hands washed, and apolo-
gized for. They felt none of the mixture of pride and
shame which made my English friends say, " We'll mud-
dle through it somehow, I suppose." The year 1914 was
called by the Germans " The Iron Year/' and the war
they called the " Folk War." Every German knew the
object of the war. It was to fulfil the destinies of the
Empire.
Significant of this was the constant recurrence of the
GERMAN " PREPAREDNESS " 55
phrase Die Zukunft — the Future. Magazines and news-
papers teemed with it, and always in the German future,
as in the present, war had a prominent place. War was
" the father of all and the king of all." When Germans
spoke of a " lasting peace " they added, " a peace for
forty years." Now it is already more than forty years
since 1 870*71, but with the typical German habit of
thinking in centuries the seers were already anticipating
I954> when the old sad round would begin again and
the nation would draw a step nearer to its sky-topping
goal.
But Germans wondered at their own unanimity.
Quietly, irresistibly, all life, all thought was warped to
the one end of making war. The Odeon Werke, a small
phonograph factory which I visited, was turning out one
hundred shrapnel shells a day ; the canning factories had
accumulated stocks to supply the armies for four years,
yet they were working at maximum capacity. I talked
with Herr W. Tiirke, manager of the immense Eckert
Plow Factory, makers of agricultural implements, three-
fourths of the product of which is commonly sold
abroad. " We make nothing but munitions now," he ex-
plained. " Our machinery was specially designed so
that it could be transferred at once to munition work.
There is no such thing as that anywhere where private
enterprise persists. Government officials are absolutely
in charge of my factory, and they are turning out
grenades, shrapnel shells, bombs, pressed-steel trucks,
56 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
and ammunition transports. You see, we Germans or-
ganize victory."
Another day I spent with Herr Konsul Marx at 44
Charlottenstrasse, learning how the Germans withdrew
their financial deposits in foreign countries before the
outbreak of the war and thus were not " caught nap-
ping."
" Germany foresaw everything," he concluded.
Industry, commerce, finance, as much as ammunition
and armies, were looked upon as the property of the Em-
pire. And much the same attitude was observable toward
the Kaiser. Germans looked on him as an asset, person-
ally and politically. I remember one half-humorous con-
versation in which I upheld the republican ideal and con-
demned the imperial.
" We must have the best men in the administration of
affairs," agreed the German. " You Americans get
them in a republic, we in an imperial form of govern-
ment. But remember that if Germany became a republic
tomorrow we would go to the polls and elect as president
Mr. William Hohenzollern. Don't laugh! He is our
greatest man. He understands us, and we understand
him thoroughly. There is an immense advantage to a
people in watching their ruler from the cradle to the
throne. You can never know your American presidents
as we know our German Emperor."
It is this same historical sense of the Germans which
led them to the theory of the defensive-offense — the
GERMAN " PREPAREDNESS " 57
military theory that one must strike the enemy before he
is prepared in order to defend oneself against him. And
it was the acceptance of this theory by Socialists and
monarchists, laborers and capitalists alike which enabled
the German Empire to launch upon a sleeping world the
war it had prepared.
But the silence of the Socialists seemed a profound
mystery. The German Sozialdemokratie had been fight-
ing Prussian militarism for years. Hardly an election
passed without increases in the strength of the Social-
Democratic party, in spite of appallingly unjust laws di-
rectly intended to keep a large part of the laboring class
disfranchised and in spite of a Socialist Code which
hampered the spread of the movement by bullying its
press and breaking up its public meetings. When the
war broke out the German Socialists had one hundred
and twelve deputies in the Reichstag, all of them, like
their Socialist brethren the world over, pledged to
peace.
On August first Socialists were called to the colors,
like everybody else; and they responded without a dis-
senting voice. On August fourth the Reichstag Socialist
bloc voted for the war budget, and went so far as to
cheer at the toast, "Long live His Majesty, the Kaiser;
the people, and the Fatherland! " Eight days after the
mobilization the Imperial Union for Fighting the Social-
Democrats — a powerful organization, having locals in all
parts of Germany, and organized by a general in the Im-
58 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
perial army for the one purpose of annihilating the So-
cialist movement — this powerful Union disbanded, de-
claring that there were no more Socialists to fight; that
all now were Germans and brothers ; and that it was giv-
ing its books, its money, and its office furniture to the
Red Cross.
Vorwarts, the daily newspaper published by the So-
cial-Democrats, which had always been anathema to con-
servative Germans, and which had never been allowed
on news-stands in public places such as railway stations,
subways, and hotels, now appeared on these news-stands
cheek by jowl with the Berliner Lokal Anzeiger — the in-
spired organ of the German Government.
On my way to see Dr. Karl Liebknecht at the Reichs-
tag I stopped at the Central Hotel to see if I could buy
Vorwarts.
" We haven't it today, sir," said the clerk.
" But you have it on other days ? "
" Oh, yes, sir."
" Well, why haven't you the paper today? Have you
sold all your copies ? "
" No/' the clerk explained ; " the Government forbids
it."
"Forbids you to sell it?"
" Oh, no, sir. The Government has forbidden Vor-
wdrts to appear at all ! " And he handed me a folded leaf-
let on which was printed in large letters :
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS 59
To the Subscribers of " Vorwarts":
The Commander-in-Chief in the Mark sent us the follow-
ing notice Sunday evening at 9 o'clock :
" The appearance of Vorwarts is hereby forbidden until
further notice."
(Signed) VON KESSEL,
Major-General.
Berlin, S.W. 68, Lindenstr. 3.
28 September, 1914.
Editor and Manager of Vorwarts.
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS
The first floor of the Reichstag was full of refugees
from East Prussia and volunteer officers administering
relief. It was quiet and reverential as a funeral. There
was something strangely dead about the Reichstag. As
I went up to the office of Deputy Dr. Karl Liebknecht
I passed a series of little cells with doors marked
" Polish Party " and " Social-Democratic Party "—cata-
combs of ambitions and hopes.
But there was nothing deathlike about Dr. Karl
Liebknecht. Son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, the famous
revolutionist of 1848, his own record has been as lively.
In 1907 he was sentenced to serve eighteen months in
prison for high treason because of his book Militarism
and Anti-militarism. In 1908 he became a member of the
Prussian Diet; in 1912 he was elected to the Reichstag,
where he rapidly assumed a position of leadership among
the Socialist Deputies; in 1913 his charges in the
60 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
Reichstag led to scandalous revelations which touched
even the Imperial Court and the house of Krupp.
I remember him chiefly as a dark round face, semi-
circled by the sort of black ringlets which come from a
hair mattress; not a keen face at first glance, not the
face of a man of action apparently; a sort of pro-
fessorial, cloistered, comfortable face. One felt like
talking over the college courses one might take in the
next semester rather than discussing the affairs of the
Empire.
Then Dr. Liebknecht began to speak, leaning forward
over the little table in his private office. His voice was
very musical and very gentle. He spoke German in a
way to soften all its angles, but what he said contradicted
the delicate tone in which he said it.
" It is a war of lies." He looked me straight in the
eye. " Every nation concerned lies. The German news-
papers lie as a matter of course. When the war began
the Socialists were fully aware that it was due to the
capitalistic incentive of Austria-Hungary. We held
dozens of protest meetings here in Berlin. Vorw'drts
published stout editorials. We had demonstrations
against the war. Then came the censorship. We could
do, we could say, nothing."
"But why?" I asked. "Americans expected you to
do a great deal."
" You do not understand the power of the censorship,"
he said quietly. " You Americans cannot imagine the
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS 61
awful power of the military. In one day, in one hour,
we were cut off. Every man became like a separate cell
in the body politic. Every man was isolated with his
own thoughts or else he was drowned in the flooding
ideas of the war. From the moment the censorship shut
down there was no more exchange of ideas. Every
thinking man in Germany became a mental prisoner."
"But what is the war for, Herr Doktor?"
" It is a war of conquest. Whatever its causes may
have been, we know that the Imperial Government in-
tends it to be a war of conquest. There are rich mines
in France and Belgium. They will never be given back.
The Government will do with them and with us just as
it pleases.
" It has done as it pleases with all the German people.
I am a member of the Reichstag. The Chancellor of
the Empire sent an ultimatum to Belgium on August
second, 1914. That ultimatum was never reported to the
Reichstag until August fifth. The war budget was pre-
sented on August fourth and passed on August fifth,
with the concurrence of all the Socialists except fifteen.
That is abominable duplicity on the part of the Govern-
ment. Those fifteen Social-Democrats who voted against
the war credits were the only real revolutionists. They
were not for reconciliation with capitalism, but for fists.
" But they were helpless. The lying press was inflam-
ing the people against our enemies — against the Russians
and the French and the Belgians and the English. The
62 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
German papers were flooded with stories of atrocities
committed upon German soldiers which to my certain
knowledge were afterward disproved but never publicly
denied. The people were told that the Russians were
barbarians, the French fools, the Belgians superstitious
weaklings, and the English cowardly sneaks.
" The causes of the war were obscure. The Socialists
really thought that Germany could not be responsible for
such a catastrophe. Czarism was ostensibly the issue on
which the war began, and it was on that issue that the
Social-Democratic bloc voted the war credits on August
fifth. Nobody exactly understood the situation. The
Socialists had lost their press at one stroke, for the cen-
sorship was absolute, and so they were like sheep with-
out a shepherd."
" How do you feel about Belgium ? " I questioned.
Dr. Liebknecht's voice continued in the same even,
professorial tone. " I was in Stuttgart at the time that
von der Goltz was appointed Governor-General of Bel-
gium. I tried to get up a protest meeting against an-
nexation. The military government would not permit so
much as a public poster advertising the meeting. Indeed,
the Government forbade meetings of any sort for any
cause.
" But you can see that the newspapers are preparing
the nation for the final annexation of Belgium. ' We
have bought this province with our blood/ they argue,
without thinking of the Belgian blood. ' We have paid
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS 63
for it with our lives. The Belgians,' they say, ' are little
higher than brutes. They are completely dominated by
their clergy, they are ignorant and superstitious and
backward, they do not deserve to possess their own coun-
try/ All such nonsense as that passes current for wis-
dom in Germany today."
" But what have the Socialists really done about it? "
" Very little," he said. " Vorwarts has been closed
twice and has had to agree in writing that it will not
mention the class-war. Here is another example of what
has taken place. My wife is Russian, and the war had
barely started when my house was searched, my private
papers were seized and carted off, and the sanctity of my
whole establishment was violated on the pretext that my
wife might be a spy. And in spite of the fact that I
am a member of the Reichstag, not one word of this af-
fair ever got into a Berlin newspaper."
" But, Herr Doktor," I said doubtfully, " you Social-
ists seem to us Americans to have lost a great oppor-
tunity. Frankly, we cannot understand your attitude as
a party. We think you have been — to put it very frankly
— cowardly."
"You think we have been cowards," he repeated
gravely, never taking his eyes from my face. "Well,
perhaps we have been. Remember, the German Social-
Democrats own property worth more than twenty million
marks. They own printing-presses and halls and .the-
aters and the like. You know, property makes men
64 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
cautious. Perhaps our possessions have made us con-
servative. Perhaps the German Socialists do not dare
to risk all."
Herr Karl Kautsky, the veteran commentator on
Marx, I found on the top floor of a Charlottenburg
apartment-house, in a little den crammed with books and
pleasantly odorous of old bindings and printer's ink. His
face was cameo white, and its expression scarcely changed
throughout our talk. Only the dark eyes seemed really
alive. His white hair and white beard looked rather
like silken adornments for the cameo face; they seemed
to have no relation to the personality of the old man.
I was irritated with Herr Kautsky, and my attitude
was frankly unsympathetic. I was irritated with his
cautiousness and his bookishness and his air of letting
the world go about its business. That may have been
because Herr Bernstein was with him — a keen, obviously
Jewish " intellectual," black as Mephisto, who seemed
anxious that Herr Kautsky should tell nothing, and
whose every statement seemed to come through double
lines of internal censors before it reached his lips. A
copy of the New York radical mazagine The Masses
lay on Herr Kautsky's table, and I took its presence
as a good omen. I was mistaken.
" Did you Socialists make no effort to stop the war ? "
I asked.
" The party did not," said Herr Kautsky. " We saw
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS 65
long ago, we German Social-Democrats, that we should
be powerless in the event of war. The French Socialists
thought that they could stop war. They talked of gen-
eral strikes and immense movements for peace. We
German Socialists knew better. We had our meetings
of protest. There were great Socialistic demonstrations
on Unter den Linden just before Germany declared war
on Russia. We had stirring protests in Vorwdrts. We
did our best to prevent the war, but we were powerless
the instant martial law was proclaimed. Now we can
do nothing. Vorzvdrts has been suspended. We have
no press, we have no forum. We are heart and soul
against a war of conquest, but we cannot even protest
against the annexation of Belgium."
" But why did you do nothing in the Reichstag?" I
asked.
"What could we do?" said Herr Bernstein, speaking
slowly and gravely in English. " The Kaiser does not
ask permission of the Reichstag to make war. He asks
only for money to carry on war. When the time comes
to make peace, he will make peace without consulting the
Reichstag, and the terms of peace will be those he ar-
ranges."
" And so you are not going to do anything until
after peace is made?" I asked, again turning to Herr
Kautsky.
" We can do nothing," he repeated. " We are leaders
without followers. There are two million German So-
66 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
cialists in the army. That means half of our mem-
bers are gone. No Socialist in Germany knows what
that half of our party is thinking, no Socialist can be
sure what those two millions think of this war. We
cannot talk to them, we cannot even send them letters
by the army mails. They are cut off, isolated, every
man of them. Perhaps they may talk together by twos
or threes, but each man is thinking alone. What do
they think? That is the great question for German So-
cialists to answer."
I grew more and more irritated. The atmosphere of
caution and inaction seemed to me unworthy a man call-
ing himself a Socialist and an internationalist. I blurted
out a rank criticism or two. Herr Kautsky went on,
prompted occasionally by the watchful Herr Bernstein.
" You are an outsider," he said. " The picture is not
so black as you may think. For years we have been
living under the Socialist Code — laws framed by the Ger-
man Government to prevent our meeting or reading or
even thinking. We have learned how to convey informa-
tion to each other secretly. Intelligent Socialists are not
being misled by the silence of Vorivarts. Some are con-
fused, no doubt, but not all, and Vorwdrts will do all
it can. We have learned how to read between the
lines." *
1 See Appendix I, page 327.
THE ATTACK 67
THE ATTACK
ON October second I was invited by the Foreign Of-
fice at 76 Wilhelmstrasse to interview the Imperial Vice-
Chancellor, Vice-President of the Royal Prussian Minis-
try of State, and Secretary of State for the Interior,
Excellenz Clemens Gottlieb Ernst Delbriick. The invi-
tation was formal as a summons to court. The ancestry
and offices of the minister were recounted; the place,
time, and nature of the interview were defined; and spe-
cial emphasis was laid upon the fact that His Excellency
had never before discussed affairs of Empire with an
interviewer.
Military automobiles in gray war-paint were flying
about the city like hawks ; black-white-and-red flags flut-
tered from all the public buildings; five Belgian cannon
huddled at the base of the bronze Frederick Second on
Unter den Linden; French machine-guns squatted in an
irregular line before the palace of the Crown Prince ; and
a dozen battered and dented Russian field-pieces lay in
the gutter before the Kaiser's Schloss as symbols of Ger-
man victory. On the window glass in the offices of the
Lokal Anzeiger were pasted bits of white paper telling of
new successes: von Hindenburg's advance into Russia
and capture of Suwalki, the fighting before Verdun in
France, and the fall of the outer forts of Antwerp.
The plain-clothes watchman on guard at the Foreign
Office led me into a tiny cubbyhole, where I waited while
68 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
a cold autumn wind blew in from the beech wood
where Bismarck loved to walk. A lithograph map of
Germany, a plain uneasy chair, a table, a window — that
was the reception room. For the seal of the Iron Chan-
cellor was set on the Wilhelmstrasse. The Foreign Of-
fice was as severe and barren, as secret and as stout,
as any medieval donjon keep. Men with iron masks
might live there and never a word of them reach the
outside world. The very air in the offices seemed colder
and more mysterious than the usual atmosphere of of-
ficialdom.
After a quarter of an hour the door to my cell opened
and I became one of a group of seven or eight press
representatives, American, South American, Swiss, and
Scandinavian — the few neutrals left in the world! —
making my bow to a chubby, unctuous diplomat, Baron
von Mumm Schwartzenstein, former German Ambassa-
dor to Tokio. The Baron had the look and air of a suc-
cessful British banker, but he carried the weight of the
world on his rounded shoulders, for he was officially in
charge of all the foreign newspaper representatives and
of what they told and did not tell their journals.
His office was as gloomy as an undertaker's rooms.
A few stray, level sunbeams crawled under the low-
drawn curtains, and sparrows chirped outside. The of-
fice was decked with much discolored marble at door and
hearth, and one caught a glimpse of what seemed to be
the popular Prussian painting, — a muscular and very
THE ATTACK 69
blonde Briinnhilde trampling and spearing the breast of
a very dark Latin lady.
We were soon led to another reception hall, where we
met the Vice-Chancellor, and were quickly seated at a
green baize-covered table. Before each of us was a pa-
per pad and a pencil, and a typewritten abstract of what
His Excellency proposed to say. The gentleman before
us was a fine-looking Prussian about fifty years old, with
sparse hair, open blue eyes, a frank face, and a friendly
manner. He seemed like the Dutch uncle of fiction.
As we listened to the formal, scientific statement — a
statement like a college lecture or a seminar conducted
by a thoughtful German professor at the head of a long
table — I caught glimpses of the whole drama of modern
Germany. It frightened and weighed upon me like a bad
dream.
Behind us lay a chaotic congeries of States and the
gaunt, tenacious emergence of Prussia; the slow spread
of industrialism into Germany; the riotous days of 1848,
when Wilhelm First fled Berlin for the Pfauen Insel —
his Elba; not his Saint Helena. The German Empire
slowly forged in the Prussian furnace, shaped by the
Prussian sword; the wars of 1864, 1866, 1870-71, and
the screaming burst of energy, industrial, political, and
military, since the Franco-Prussian War. It was a pic-
ture of a medieval political organization dowered with the
enormous wealth and power of twentieth century in-
dustrialism ; a Z Oliver ein developed into high tariff walls,
70 BERLIN THE TERRIBLE
so that the Fatherland might be industrially self-con-
tained; skeins of strategic railways, Armadas of sub-
sidized shipping, schools and press subsidized, censored,
coerced; and more and more mountains of ammunition
for a war which was sure to come.
Then the dawn of " the day " ; the military mobiliza-
tion, and with it the marvelous industrial mobilization.
How the crisis in the currency was overcome at a stroke ;
how there was no moratorium; how credit was rehabili-
tated by the creation of cycles of new banks; how local
and provincial employment agencies were consolidated
into one Imperial Employment Office; how whole vil-
lages of German fishermen were transplanted from the
North Sea to the Baltic; how the miners from the Sile-
sian coal fields were transported to the Masurian Lakes
after Hindenburg's victory, to bury the hundreds of thou-
sands of Russians sucked under in the swamps, where
acres of swollen, festering hands were stretched to
heaven from the stinking earth ; how minimum prices for
grain and flour checked speculation in food; how iron
and steel, textiles, arms, leather, and conserve industries
were centralized and controlled by the State; how the
German people subscribed their four and one-half mil-
liards to the first War Loan as if it were pennies instead
of marks — and far beyond the frontiers, eastward and
westward, avalanches of guttural-voiced men in gray-
green uniforms, falling upon France and Russia and un-
protected Belgium.
CHAPTER III
THE FALL OF ANTWERP
BERLIN VERSUS ANTWERP
A Page from a Diary
Monday, October 5: left Berlin for Belgium.
Tuesday, October 6: reached Antwerp; arrested as a
spy; released.
Wednesday, October 7: at midnight bombardment of
Antwerp commenced.
Thursday, October 3: at 3.00 P. M., a 12.09 c.m. shrapnel
shell burst in house where I was staying, completely wreck-
ing two floors ; nobody killed.
Friday, October 9: Belgians and British expeditionary
forces evacuated Antwerp. At noon bombardment ceased,
after thirty-six continuous hours. At 2.00 p. M., German
army entered.
Saturday, October 10: left Antwerp on foot and walked
through German lines to Dutch frontier.
Sunday, October n : at 3.00 A. M., cabled story to New
York from Rotterdam.
FOUR days after the interview with Excellenz Del-
briick I was in Antwerp, the beleaguered capital of Bel-
gium.
At Esschen, a little Flemish town just across the fron-
tier from Holland, everything was in confusion. The
crowded railway station was vile with every imaginable
7'
72 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
human stench. Night and day, for almost a month,
refugees had lodged in straw littered about the floor.
Poverty-stricken Belgians sat hunched up in the corners,
or sprawled full-length in the malodorous pile. Babies
screamed incessantly. A few women wept. The eyes of
all were red. In the dirty, narrow street behind the sta-
tion stood fifty awkward Flemish carts piled high with
bedding and furniture hastily flung together in the panic
of departure. Every one was fleeing toward Holland.
" When is the next train for Antwerp ? "
" There is no train for Antwerp, monsieur." The
sad blue eyes of the station agent hardened as he stared
at me.
" Then I must drive to Cappellen."
" Impossible, monsieur."
The agent whispered to some one behind him. A man
in a faded and very dirty blue uniform, with a round
blue cap, came out and whispered to another in the sta-
tion. A curious group of people crowded behind me to
listen. I could hear them stirring and whispering suspi-
ciously.
" What is your business, monsieur ? "
" I am on official business. I must see the American
Consul General in Antwerp."
"You have papers?"
" Of course."
The group crowded close. The man in the blue uni-
form was at my elbow, breathing hard as if he had been
BERLIN VERSUS ANTWERP 73
running. It was a ticklish moment. I showed the lat-
ter half of my passport, bearing the round red American
seal; but one part of the pass I did not show — the part
which read, " Gesehen! Gut zum Eintritt in das Reichs-
gebiet. Haag, den //. Septbr., 1914. Gesehen. Berlin,
28. September, 1914. Auswdrtiges Ami des Deutschen
Reichs Pass-Bureau" stamped with the eagle-crested
seals of Germany.
The harassed ticket-agent and the bystanders were
convinced. They murmured approvingly, "American!
Mynheer is American ! " There would be a train for
Antwerp, perhaps at three o'clock, perhaps at four, per-
haps at five. Who knows? Monsieur could wait where
he would.
This was war I thought : sordid, unhappy, disorderly ;
the fearful flotsam of the floods poured out from Berlin.
It was much more real than the mechanical perfection
which I had seen in Germany. In Esschen there was a
hideous droop to the shoulders of every one, as if they
carried unbearable burdens. Only half a dozen children,
playing noisily at soldiers with broomsticks and pans in
the cluttered street behind the station, seemed untouched
by the general misery.
The train came; late, of course. There were perhaps
a dozen passengers, all men. The little train lurched
painfully through timid towns, past neatly cultivated
fields and forests where acres and acres of trees had been
74 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
cut down by the Belgian soldiers and piled in tangled
heaps, while the naked stumps, left standing knee-high,
were sharpened wickedly to impede cavalry charges, past
belts of barbed-wire entanglements stretching as far as
one could see, past earthworks hidden in fringes of
woods, past beautiful old chateaux and the country-
houses of millionaire Antwerp merchants, stark and
empty now, past high old-fashioned bastions of forts
dating from Vauban's and Napoleon's day.
Twice my passport was examined by Belgian sentries,
and twice I succeeded in concealing the German vise.
So at dusk we jolted into the dark Central Station of
Antwerp.
AN AMERICAN SPY
A few oil lanterns gave the only light in the station.
People hurried by in the darkness like ghosts; they con-
versed in undertones.
At the wicket I was stopped and my passport de-
manded. This time I could not conceal the German
vise, and the Belgian official peered at me in astonish-
ment.
" Why has monsieur come ? " I explained that mon-
sieur is an American redacteur — an editor. The offi-
cial was sorry, but he could not admit monsieur to the
city. But if monsieur were determined to enter? . . .
A group formed quickly about us, and their remarks
were not reassuring. I explained myself clumsily.
THE AUTHOR'S PASSPORT
AN AMERICAN SPY 75
"Yes," said the official, "but the seal of the Belgian
Minister at The Hague has been placed on monsieur's
passport before that of the German Minister. The seal
is four weeks old. Meanwhile monsieur has been in
Berlin!"
"True," I acknowledged, "but I am an American,
and besides I have friends in Antwerp who can vouch
for me."
"Monsieur has friends? Monsieur must come into
the station and wait for the commandant."
My two hours' detention in the marble waiting-room
of the Central Station was strange as hysteria. I was
thoroughly frightened. My imagination played strange
tricks. It tried and convicted me without mercy. It
sported with me as cruelly as a cat does with a mouse,
and before the bar of my conscience I pled guilty to
espionage in its worst form, — the pitiless artistic desire
to witness catastrophes where one can be of no assist-
ance.
Ghostly soldiers, black-robed priests, and Red Cross
nurses flickered past me in the gloom. There was a ta-
ble spread in a far corner with great round loaves scat-
tered upon it, and oil lamps shedding a little glow of
light which made it seem like a parody of da Vinci's
"Last Supper."
At half past seven the Belgian colonel in charge of
the railway station came to quiz me. He stood before
me as stiff as a statue, and as cold.
76 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
" Your papers, monsieur ! " he ordered crisply. " Why
have you come to Antwerp ? "
" I am an American redacteur"
"Yes?"
" I am here to study war conditions."
"Yes?"
" You will see from my papers that I have been in
Berlin. It was for the same purpose : to study war con-
ditions."
"Yes?"
" I have friends in Antwerp."
" But when were you in Berlin ? "
" I left there yesterday morning."
" Yesterday ! ! ! " He looked at me in amazement.
" Yesterday? " he repeated. " The vise is dated Septem-
ber twenty-eighth, but you were in Berlin yesterday ? "
" Yes, mon Colonel."
" I must send you to military headquarters ! " He
beckoned to a soldier. " Take mynheer — " he began in
Flemish.
I followed the soldier through the black corridors of
the station and out into the night. There was not a
light in the streets, for fear of Zeppelins. Twice during
the month of August the great air-craft had hung above
the city and dropped bombs, and fear of them still ran
high. The cold October sky arched over us like a cave.
There were crowds about us. I could hear them walk-
ing in the street and on the pavement. Occasionally I
AN AMERICAN SPY 77
caught a scrap of muffled conversation in Flemish.
Once there was a suppressed sob. Some one opened the
door of a cafe, and there was a sudden burst of light,
immediately extinguished as the man slipped inside. I
heard a glass clink and a girl laugh, but I could see
nothing.
A military automobile hurriedly rounded the corner,
and its blazing white searchlight illuminated for a mo-
ment herds of scurrying figures on the avenue.
Sentries challenged us in the dark. My guard talked
with them in whispers. We passed on. . . .
Headquarters consisted of several small, ramshackle
buildings, full of little offices. No one seemed to know
where I should report. I went into a little bare room,
half full of lounging soldiers who stared at me curiously,
then into a second, and at last to a third. There a fine
young major, his eyes pathetically anxious, examined
me. My guard watched in silence.
"You have been in Berlin?"
" Certainly. I left there yesterday to come to Ant-
werp."
"Why?"
" To learn the truth about war conditions."
"Your papers!"
I showed my papers ; all that I had with me.
The major evidently had had to do with other Ameri-
cans, for his next question was, " Do you wish to see the
battlefields?"
78 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
" No, I do not," I said.
The major spoke in Flemish to a second officer. Then
he turned to my guard and addressed him in French. I
have never heard more comfortable words.
" It is plain/' he said slowly, " that monsieur is an
American. But monsieur must go to the American Con-
sul General early tomorrow morning and get a paper
certifying that he is entitled to a pass admitting him to
Antwerp. Monsieur may go now." And the major
wished us a very good night.
My soldier escort presented arms, and we marched
out into the dark. I bade him and the sentries adieu,
but they would not have it so. " The night is very
dark," they said. " Monsieur might lose his way." So
they saw me safely to my hotel.
ENGLAND AIDS BELGIUM
I woke at four in the morning. Down the gray canyon
of street below my window a long procession of Belgian
artillery pounded and rattled over the cobble-stones.
For half an hour it rumbled and jolted past — a line of
dejected-looking horses and silent men. Then, when it
had gone out of ear-shot, I heard far away the boom
boom boom boom boom boom boom of the
big guns in the forts.
Automobiles full of officers, English as well as Bel-
gian, were flying about the streets when I left the hotel
after breakfast. Mr. Winston Churchill had paid a hur-
ENGLAND AIDS BELGIUM 79
ried call to Antwerp on the preceding Friday, when af-
fairs looked darkest, and an expeditionary force had
come from England to the relief of the Belgians. The
force consisted of a marine brigade and two naval bri-
gades, with some heavy naval guns manned by a detach-
ment of the Royal Navy. It numbered all told eight
thousand men. But the reinforcement seemed singularly
haphazard. The First Lord of the British Admiralty
dashed into Antwerp late in the evening with half a dozen
armored motor-cars, arriving unheralded and unexpected
to take charge of the situation. In the Hotel de Londres
I met a blithe young man named Julian Arthur Jones,
son of the English playwright, Henry Arthur Jones,
who told me in whispered confidence that Churchill had
brought sixteen thousand first-rate British soldiers!
But conditions looked grave. The narrow Flemish
streets still blazed with Belgian, French, and British
flags, and most of the shops were open, but there was
an alarming proclamation on all the pillar-posts, signed
by the Belgian General Deguise.
ANTWERP, October 6, 10 P. M. — The situation of Ant-
werp is serious. Lieutenant-General Deguise, commanding
the fortress, has addressed this evening to the burgomasters
of the towns in the fortified zone the following letter :
" I have the honor to bring to the attention of the popu-
lation the fact that the bombardment of the agglomeration
of Antwerp and its environs is imminent.
" It is self-evident that the menace or the execution of
8o THE FALL OF ANTWERP
a bombardment will have no influence on the length of the
resistance, which will be carried to the last extremity.
" Persons wishing to avoid the effects of the said bom-
bardment are requested to withdraw without delay in the
direction of the north or the north-east."
The forts of Lierre fell on Tuesday, October sixth,
and King Albert, the Queen, and the Government moved
to the town of Saint Nicolas on their way to the coast.
The morning newspapers were calm, but by no means
reassuring. People were leaving the city. They hurried
anxiously to and fro, dragging with them hastily packed
bundles of clothing, hand satchels, baby carriages,
trunks, valises, umbrellas, and innumerable boxes.
Street-cars were crammed with refugees and their
goods, and outside the railway stations hundreds and
thousands of people crowded together clamoring to be
let inside. The rich left their houses to caretakers and
departed in automobiles and carriages. The poor went
on foot without giving a thought to what had to remain
behind. There was almost no order; no direction.
Wednesday's exodus was already a rout.
Banks were mobbed by people clamoring for their
money. The gold reserves of the National Bank were
sent for safe-keeping to England. Shops and ware-
houses closed as fast as they could. Hotels and cafes
shut their doors and barricaded the windows. Citizens
piled sand-bags against the cellar-ventilators of their
houses as a protection against shells. People in general,
ENGLAND AIDS BELGIUM 81
even those who intended to remain in Antwerp come
what might, seemed unnerved.
In the American Consul General's anteroom on the
top floor at number 24 rue des Freres Cellites, I found
an excited assistant imploring everybody who called for
advice to get out of Antwerp as quickly as pos-
sible.
" What are you going to do ? " I asked.
" I have to stay," he answered. " But if I were in
your shoes, I would leave the city at once. It is going
to be bombarded." His voice shook.
" I came here to get your vise on my papers, so I can
stay," I said.
" Get out of the city at once ! "
" But I intend to stay. Surely there will be plenty of
people who stay."
He stared at me as if I were a lunatic ; then he disap-
peared into the inner offices.
I looked up one of the Consular clerks, and she made
out a little paper for me and stamped it with a big blue
seal.
" Are you going to stay through the bombardment ? "
I asked her.
" Oh, yes," she said. " All the Consulate people have
to stay. You'll find us here in the cellar if they shell the
town."
" I'm glad to know that," I answered. " I shall look
you up. It will be pleasant to join the American Colony.
82 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
. . . Auf Wiederseh'n" I added. " Oh, I beg pardon.
That's German!"
WAR CORRESPONDENTS
At the Belgian military headquarters things were in a
chaotic state. Weeping women and excited men stormed
the place to ask advice. It took me more than half an
hour to find my Belgian major, and when I found
him he had no time to make out the formal pass for
me. Sentries, orderlies, and officers were worn out.
The whole atmosphere of the place was one of despair.
I knew that if I were arrested in Antwerp without a
pass, I might be shot as a spy, but there was too much
misery and anxiety at headquarters for me to intrude
further.
I saw two men arrested on the street outside the mili-
tary offices. Fifteen minutes later I was told they had
been shot against a wall.
I was walking down street in front of the deserted
royal palace and the rococo mansions on the Place de
Meir, when a German Taube flew directly overhead. It
was like a beautiful bird sweeping across the sky, but
the sight of it terrified the crowds beyond measure.
In less than a minute the streets were absolutely de-
serted. Shops and banks and hallways of private
residences were suddenly crammed with people, their
faces blanched, eyes staring with horror, their mouths
open. Antwerp had been terrorized by the Zeppelins, so
WAR CORRESPONDENTS 83
that every one was afraid. The Taube flew serenely
away, and the streets gradually filled again, but people
walked closer to the buildings and hurried when they
passed exposed places.
Shops were rapidly closing. By afternoon, less than
half of them were open, and by five o'clock in the
evening most of the hotels had shut their doors. From
the southeast came the incessant boom boom boom
boom of the big guns. Bombardment was imminent.
Hugh Gibson, secretary of the American Legation in
Brussels, had gone through the lines carrying to the
German General, Hans von Beseler, a chart of Antwerp
on which were shown the principal architectural treas-
ures, so that the German guns might spare them if pos-
sible. Belgian soldiers by twos, threes, and half-
dozens, weary and discouraged, slouched along the pave-
ments. Many probably were deserters. An English
major said that it was practically impossible to hold the
Belgians to the trenches. They had had their bellyful of
battle, and no wonder ! With almost no help from their
allies, they had borne the brunt of incessant attacks from
an invincible enemy. Rumors of a great French ad-
vance flew about the city, and some even believed that
the sound of the cannon portended a Belgian action in
the rear of the Germans. But such tales could no longer
buoy up the spirits of the troops. It was up to the
British expeditionary forces to hold the lines, so the
English major said. And as evening fell, whole com-
84 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
panics of Belgian infantry and cavalry passed, all going
westward. Troops were being drawn off from
the forts; the officers called it "making a change of
base."
Red Cross ambulances clanged by bringing wounded
to the hospitals, but those who could walk from the bat-
tlefields straggled into the city as best they could.
In the Hotel Saint Antoine on the Place Verte I
found a group of American and British war cor-
respondents and photographers. Horace Green of the
New York Evening Post was there; gentle-voiced, ob-
servant, and calm as a Harvard Crimson scribe writing
up a collegiate lecture. Julian Arthur Jones dropped in,
eager as a cub reporter on his first assignment, and ex-
plaining to all of us what was going on. And there was
a mysterious looking British intelligence officer named
Montfort and a number of reserve officers, lounging
about the lobby ; for the Saint Antoine was British head-
quarters.
" Are you going to stick it out? " asked Julian Jones.
"Yes," I said. "Are you?"
" My paper orders me to stay. Look at this pile of
telegrams ; fifteen if there is one, and all came today, too.
Bally trick, I say, to order a man to stay in this hole
while the Germans capture it. I suppose I'll date my
next despatch to the Chronicle from the Kingdom of
Heaven; eh what?" . . .
A thin-faced Westerner in immaculate riding-breeches
WAR CORRESPONDENTS 85
and puttees came into the lobby and slouched down
wearily into a chair.
" Have you had anything to eat? " I asked him by way
of introduction.
" No," he answered listlessly.
" Well, this hotel is closing. Come along and let's see
what we can find. My name is Hunt."
" I'm Donald C. Thompson," he said, " photographer
for the New York World. Guess I'm better known in
America now than President Wilson is. I've been tak-
ing the pictures of this little war ! "
I showed interest. " Are you going to stay and take
pictures when the Germans come in ? "
'You bet your sweet life!" exploded Thompson, re-
covering his animation.
" I'm staying too. But is there really going to be a
bombardment ? "
" Yes," he said, " you bet your hat there is ! Come
and stay at my house, won't you? I've got a fine little
shack with all you want to eat and a good bed. It be-
longs to some Belgian friends of mine, but they've gone
to Holland."
I accepted gratefully. To exchange hotel quarters for
a home was bliss indeed. A hotel always seemed to me
a poor place to die in. So that night Donald Thompson
and I went to number 74 rue du Peage, a pleasant dwell-
ing house near the avenue du Sud, which was to be our
fortress during the bombardment of Antwerp. A press
86 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
photographer for the Chicago Tribune named Edwin F.
Weigle and the Dutch Vice-Consul, Mynheer de Meester,
shared the house with Thompson. A large American
flag hung over the front door, and Thompson's full
name and New York address were scrawled with indel-
ible pencil on the white panels.
We climbed the darkened stair and lit a match. It was
an attractive house, but the rooms were cluttered with
shoes, clothing, boxes, and bric-a-brac abandoned in the
hurry of departure. The beds were unmade. The
dishes were unwashed. In an oven of the big Belgian
stove in the kitchen we found a soldier's uniform and
cap hastily crammed out of sight. Jams, pickles, cured
meats, soups, wine, mineral water, a bin of apples, fresh
bread, and plenty of butter were in the cellar. We were
not to starve! And best of all, the basement was a
couple of feet below the ground level, so there would not
be too much danger from flying fragments of shells.
A pile of books lay beside my bed, and I glanced at
them before putting out the lamp. They were L'Epouse
du Soleil, Cadet la Perle, Quo Vadis, Sudermann's La
Femme en Gris, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox's " Poems of
Passion " ! With these incongruous spirits to guard me,
I fell asleep with a sense of comfort and security.
THE BOMBARDMENT OF ANTWERP 87
THE BOMBARDMENT OF ANTWERP
I was awakened by a tremendous roar and a shock
which seemed to lift the house from its foundations. Im-
mediately there came a distant boom! a shrill snarling
whistle, then another explosion which pounded the air
like storm.
Boom - wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeieieieieiekkkkkkkkkBANG-
GGGG! Boom - wheeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEIEIEIEIEIE-
KKKKKKKKBANGGGGGGGGG! Every pane of
glass in the house blew out in the chaos which followed
the bursting of that fourth bomb. It had hit directly
across the street, less than thirty-five feet from where I
was hurrying into my clothes. I could hear screams and
sobs; then the sound of people rushing by the house,
and the crash of glass which littered the sidewalks,
splintering to bits as the people ran. But above every
other sound clamored the continuous mad-dog snarling
of the German shells. Boom - wheeeeeeeeeeieieieieiekk-
kkBANG — boom - wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeieieiekkkkkk-
BANG - wheeeeeeeeeeekkboomBANG - wheeeeeeeeeee-
ieieleboomieieikkkkkBANG - boom - wheeEEEEEEEE
IEIEIEIEIEIEKKKKK - BANGGGGGGGGGGGG! !
My watch read 12.05, Belgian time. . . .
From the cellar came a frightened, unintelligible
voice.
"Everybody all right?" I yelled, strapping on my
belt of gold-pieces and flinging on my clothes.
88 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
" All right ! " answered Thompson shrilly from the
next room. " Y-yes," called Weigle from upstairs.
And we bolted for the cellar.
There, fully dressed even to his overcoat, was the Vice-
Consul. His teeth were chattering. He stood ankle-
deep in coke in a small fuel closet under the stairs, which
we Americans had entirely overlooked in our inspection.
A single candle-flame lighted the place. " Sh-sh-shut
the door," he begged. " Where is the g-g-g-gas meter ?
We must turn off the g-g-g-gas meter. It isn't safe. We
must turn off the g-g-g-gas meter. Where is the g-g-g-
gas meter? " The poor fellow's state was pitiful.
To my astonishment, the cannonade gave me an in-
tense feeling of exaltation. It was like the exhilaration
of fever. I was convinced that we should all be killed,
so I wrote on the walls of our cyclone-cellar the names
and addresses of Thompson, de Meester, Weigle, and my-
self. My senses were keenly alive to danger, but there
was a strange joy in the thought that life was to be ob-
literated in a mad chaos of flame and steel and thunder.
Death seemed suddenly the great adventure ; the supreme
experience. And there was something splendid, like
music, in the incessant insane snarl of the shells and the
blasts of the explosions.
Thompson and I ran upstairs and brought down mat-
tresses and blankets, then we all lay down side by side
in the coke, with the flimsy door shut to keep out stray
shells. The shell fire at first had excited ; now it seemed
THE BOMBARDMENT OF ANTWERP 89
to soothe me, and I went quietly to sleep. Occasionally
I was awakened by the Vice-Consul and Weigle arguing
whether or not we were in the direct line of fire, and
whether or not the last shell had burst nearer our house
than the first. Outside, fugitives fled sobbing along the
streets; but I slept, indifferent to them.
Such sleep is like drowning. It has the double effect
of a stimulant and a narcotic. Pictures of my past life
rushed out of the dark in streams and flooded my sleep
with bright and somber visions. I saw them, but I
slept. . . .
At four o'clock in the morning Thompson and I left
the others and went out into the avenue du Sud.
Refugees, most of them women, were hurrying by in
every direction, half -dressed, only half sane, and horri-
bly afraid. Many, no doubt, were crouching in the cel-
lars, but most of the people ran. Old and young, in little
coveys of fours, fives, half-dozens, dozens, ran along the
sidewalks, slipping and crashing over the broken glass,
making a terrifying and unearthly racket as they ran.
Whenever a shell snarled unusually near, the groups fell
cowering on hands and knees against the nearest houses.
Women covered their heads with their shawls and waited
breathless and motionless for the smash and roar of the
explosion. I saw a shell burst in the avenue within a
few yards of some of these fugitives. A woman dropped
her baby and ran on without it. Two old men, dragging
a heavy bundle of household goods between them, aban-
90 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
doned it in the street and fled screaming. A priest ran
plump into me, completely unnerved. The shell had
struck just at the corner of the rue du Peage and avenue
du Sud and had torn a hole through curb and cobble-
stones and earth three feet deep and seven feet in
diameter.
In the house just across the street from ours, a shell
had gone into the front door sill and had blown out the
entire hallway. On our side of the street, four doors
away, a shell had burst in the third story, completely
wrecking the top of the building. Only a little farther
down the street another house had been hit. From the
south of the city rose columns of black smoke, where the
suburb of Hoboken was burning, but so far as I could
see there were still no fires in the principal part of
Antwerp.
I stood in the middle of the street and watched the
gray sky in the hope of seeing a shell. The idea was
absurd, yet I felt an odd sense of being cheated of part
of the spectacle. The air seemed full of steel. I counted
three explosions a minute: I wanted to see something.
One could hear the shells so easily, it seemed ridiculous
not to see them. . . .
Belgian soldiers began to pass, hurrying westward.
Their eyes were glassy. Often they were breathless and
staggered as they walked. One of them pushed into our
open door and asked me a question in Flemish. I caught
the word " vest," and told Thompson the man was cold
WHAT A SHRAPNEL SHELL DID 91
and was asking for a waistcoat to wear under his uni-
form. Thompson brought the garment, but the soldier
shook his head. " Kleederen" — clothing, he said, and
he showed us by signs that he wanted a whole suit. The
rout had begun. Soldiers were deserting by wholesale
and attempting to escape from the city in civilian dress.
We left our front door open until nine o'clock. In
the panic of flight some of the fugitives seemed to take
comfort in stopping, if only for a moment, in the flimsy
shelter of our hallway, then darting out on their aimless
course. Once or twice I tried to talk with them in
French, but they were beyond words. They seemed to
be of all classes of the population: well-to-do burghers,
dock-dwellers, servants, and peasants.
WHAT A SHRAPNEL SHELL Dm
Daylight brought comfort, but the panic continued.
The exodus seemed endless. Little carts, wheelbarrows,
baby carriages, Flemish milk-wagons drawn by dogs,
two or three old cabs, and an occasional farm wagon
piled high with goods, went by us. Old men and women,
invalids, cripples, and young children were carried past
in that ghastly rout. I saw a man with hideously de-
formed feet and legs madly propelling himself along on
home-made crutches. A wrinkled old woman came by ,
leading a cow. Dogs were howling everywhere. There
was the incessant rattle and crash of broken glass, on the
sidewalks and in the streets as the fugitives stumbled
92 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
past. But one sound dominated everything. It was to
left of us, to right of us, behind us, before us, and over-
head. It was the smack and boom of the big guns, and
the everlasting crazy uproar of the bursting shells.
The air was bitter with powder smoke. Later I
smelled kerosene. The Germans were shelling us with
shrapnel and incendiary bombs. Fires began to shoot up
in the heart of our section. There were heavier explo-
sions. A fifth house in our block was struck, and the
entire front was riddled with lead — great jagged holes
showing in woodwork and bricks and plaster. The
house looked like a colander.
We did not know it then, but the bombardment was
systematic as a game of checkers. The city was blocked
off on checker-board charts; each battery was given its
share of work to do, its time for rest and refreshment,
and square by square the Germans shelled.
Hours dragged by. With methodical regularity the
German steel was pumped into the doomed city, except
for brief pauses once every hour, when the artillery corps
stopped to cool the guns. It was almost amusing to
think of the calm young Prussian lieutenants of artil-
lery— the same sort as those I had seen in Berlin two
days before — now five miles or more away from us,
quietly and unemotionally directing that cyclone of
shells. . . .
Fire slackened at noon and we had visitors. Our
front door bell jangled violently, and in came Horace
WHAT A SHRAPNEL SHELL DID 93
Green, cool and collected as always, but keenly sensitive
to the horrors of the situation. He confirmed the worst
fears of Weigle and the Vice-Consul by telling us that
our house was in the direct line of fire, and that no
shells had as yet fallen in the center of the city. While
he was talking, the door bell jangled again. Thompson
answered this time, and I heard his piping voice raised
in hearty greeting. " Hello, Jimmie," he yelled, " how
are you? Come right in. Glad to see you."
" It's Jimmie Hare — James H. Hare — photographer
for Leslie's Weekly" explained Green.
I had never met Hare, but I knew of him as the
veteran photographer of a dozen wars; seventy-two
years old, they said, and spry and bold as a boy. So I
left Green and ran upstairs. Thompson had vanished
completely. There was no sign of Hare. I went to the
door and threw it open. A German shell whizzed close
overhead : the bombardment had commenced again.
The Germans had taken only half an hour off for lunch!
But where was Hare ?
A little gray man, about five feet tall, wearing a boy's
cap and a brown Norfolk jacket, was hopping about on
the other side of the street in a litter of broken window
glass, bricks, and plaster dislodged by the shells. He
had a small black box in his hand, and he was sighting
it at the house. The box was a camera. The little man
was Hare.
"Hello! hello!" he yelled in the tone of an enrap-
94 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
tured camera fiend. "Hold that! Fine! Hold that
pose ! Duck your head behind the door ! Great ! " He
pointed the camera. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeieieieieikkkkkkk-
BOOM! ... A German shell burst only a quarter of
a block away. Hare dodged, but kept the camera
pointed. " Hold that pose ! " he yelled again. " Look
scared ! " I obeyed without an effort. " Fine ! Great ! "
he said again. Snap! — the picture was taken, and we
ran for the cellar together. . . .
We learned from our visitors that the American Con-
sul General, Vice-Consul, and the entire Consulate staff
had fled from the city to Ghent. What were we going
to do? We were going to stay in Antwerp, and we in-
tended to remain in our house until we were burned out
or shelled out.
We had not long to wait. Our visitors had scarcely
left us, and we were amusing ourselves in our little cy-
clone cellar, when our billet arrived. I had just com-
pleted a drawing of Weigle and the Vice-Consul lying on
the coke. There was the familiar dull, distant boom,
and the snarling wheeeeeeeieieieiekkk, but the blast that
followed was exactly over our heads, and it sounded like
all the thunders in the universe rolled into one. The
shell had exploded directly over us. It seemed to bring
down half the house about our ears.
Thompson and I raced upstairs with a bucket of
water in either hand, ready to put out any fire which
might have started. We could not see a thing. The
Photograph by James H. Hare Courtesy of Leslie's Weekly
" BEATING THE CAMERA "
The author's head just shows in the half-open door..
A BATH AND A FORCED MARCH 95
plaster dust was thicker than smoke, and the stairwell
was choked with debris, but luckily for us, part of the
wall had been blown out, and the air soon cleared suffi-
ciently for us to take stock of our situation.
Two floors and a part of a third were completely
wrecked; five rooms and a hall in all. The shell had
gone through three thick brick walls. In the ruin was a
broken couch, a smashed wardrobe, shivered mirrors,
chairs, beds, and bed linen, a collection of stamps, a
rosary, a crucifix, and quantities of small, intimate pos-
sessions of no intrinsic worth, but great personal value.
The walls were scarred and splintered. There was an
acrid smell of powder smoke in the air, gray plaster dust
covered everything, but no fire was visible.
Our door bell rang sharply, and we ran downstairs to
find our kind Belgian neighbors standing at the door
with buckets of water in their hands, all ready to help
us. There was plenty of cowardice in Antwerp during
the bombardment, but I think gratefully of the unselfish
bravery of those Belgians in the rue du Peage who were
so ready to help the strangers.
A BATH AND A FORCED MARCH
We hurried a second time to the top of the house and
looked about us. Half a dozen serious fires were blaz-
ing up in our immediate neighborhood. One of them
seemed to be in our block. The air was calm, but the
fires might spread. Dusk would soon be on us. If we
96 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
intended to move at all, we ought to take advantage of
what daylight still remained.
We decided to move.
I was dirty and tired, and felt a sudden longing for a
bath. It was the last chance of soap and water, perhaps,
for many days ; so while the others packed their motion-
picture cameras and other belongings for the trek north-
ward, I sputtered and lathered and scrubbed and rough-
toweled to my heart's content. I can remember few
more luxurious sensations in my life than that steam-hot
bath under fire of German shells. . . .
The streets were almost deserted when we began our
long walk north. Smoke obscured the sky. To some it
must have seemed like the Day of Judgment. Ruin was
everywhere. An unbelievable number of houses in our
neighborhood had been struck, and wherever shrapnel
hit, half the house had been demolished. Streets and
sidewalks were plowed and pitted. In one of the
squares stood a statue with its arm blown off by a ball.
Many houses and shops were burning, but no one was
paying any attention. The water supply had been cut
off a week before by the Germans; the fire department
was demoralized, and a few houses did not matter when
one's whole world was falling.
We came out at last on the water front by the river
Scheldt. Away to the southwest the immense Hoboken
oil tanks were blazing, and tremendous columns of jet-
black smoke were pouring up into the gray sky. Across
A BATH AND A FORCED MARCH 97
the river, from the Tete de Flandre, a Belgian fort fired
intermittently, and from the southeast still came the
boom and shriek of German shells.
Refugees were jammed along the quays, all trying to
get across the pontoon bridge to East Flanders. We
moved slowly along with the crowd, not quite certain
what to do. Fate decided for us. While we stood
watching the fugitives, the pontoon bridge closed for the
night, and thousands of unfortunates who had stood
in line for hours, hoping to cross, were driven back into
the city again. As a matter of fact, a retreat was in
progress, and the military needed the bridge.
First they transferred the wounded. Six thousand
five hundred in all were taken from the Antwerp hos-
pitals to places of safety across the river. Three hun-
dred and fifty, the worst wounded, were left to the Ger-
mans. Down the street from the Town Hall came rock-
ing and bouncing twenty or thirty old double-decked
Piccadilly motor-buses. Even their familiar advertise-
ments were still pasted on them, and their London
destinations. They had come with the British expedi-
tionary forces, and they were returning filled with
wounded.
Hospitals were rapidly emptied. Calm-faced nurses
in white overalls with Red Cross brassards on their
arms, black-robed Belgian priests, soldiers, and civilians
helped in the transfer, and nothing was more heroic in
all Antwerp than the work of the devoted Red Cross
98 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
doctors and nurses who quietly removed the wounded
from hospitals to ambulance under fire. There was
panic in some of the wards. Mutilated men dragged
themselves from their beds and pulled on what garments
they could; they screamed and implored the nurses not
to let them fall into the hands of the Germans. Some
begged revolvers so they might shoot themselves. And
in the crisis both the English and Belgian nurses were
angels of mercy indeed.
Troops followed the wounded across the Scheldt.
When night fell, Belgians and British were marching
over the bridge by squads and companies and regiments.
Tugboats puffing excitedly to and fro aided in the
transfer. The narrow bridge of boats was crowded all
night long, and the quay below the Steen — the pic-
turesque old Spanish fortress on the river's brink — was
heaped high with knapsacks, uniforms, shoes, blankets,
and other impedimenta of war.
At the Queen's Hotel, overlooking the Quai van
Dyck and the pontoon bridge, we put up for the night.
Here we found Green,1 Hare, Arthur Ruhl l of Collier's
Weekly, and the British intelligence officer. There was
a little grate fire in the hotel sitting-room, under a shal-
low glass skylight, where we gathered and talked. Those
hours were strangely revealing. The nerves of the men
1 Both Green and Ruhl are authors of excellent books on
Antwerp : The Log of a Non-Combatant, by Horace Green, Hough-
ton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1915, and Antwerp to Gallipoli, by Arthur
Ruhl, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1916.
A BATH AND A FORCED MARCH 99
were so badly shaken they could scarcely stand. Hare
had been arrested by a Belgian officer and narrowly
escaped shooting as a spy; Green had had an unusually
close shave from a shell ; Ruhl had been in the trenches
and was worn out. Things ordinarily hidden under the
surface of life came up that night like bubbles from a
stagnant pool, and perfect strangers confided to each
other their hearts* secrets.
That night I slept in room number one in the Queen's
— not five hundred yards from the pier and the pontoon
bridge — and my sleep was troubled all night long by the
weary tramp of beaten men, marching to the boats and
the possible security of East Flanders. The night was
very cold and dark, except for the ghastly light of the
burning buildings. Antwerp had fallen. This was the
aftermath. . . .
That night Sub-Lieutenant Rupert Brooke crossed
the bridge of boats. Insolent and beautiful and young,
he marched with his men, mercifully ignorant that seven
months later he was to die of disease, not battle, in the
y£gean. I have wondered since if he was then compos-
ing the sonnet he called " Peace 'V
" Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His
hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
1 This sonnet is one of five which originally appeared in New
Numbers and may be found in The Collected Poems of Rupert
Brooke, published by the John Lane Company, New York, 1915.
ioo THE FALL OF ANTWERP
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
" Oh ! we, who have known shame, we have found release
there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death."
BLOWING UP THE BRIDGE
At six o'clock Friday morning the pontoon bridge was
blown up. It was a magnificent and terrifying specta-
cle. Fugitives had been pouring across in the half-light
of early morning. Later they came flying back toward
the city as fast as they could run. The river front was
lined with helpless hordes of people and piled high with
things thrown away by the retreating Belgian and British
troops. Some of the correspondents were trying fran-
tically to engage a boat so they could get out. The
Dutch Vice-Consul and Weigle had disappeared utterly.
It was sauve qui peut.
Then from the middle of the bridge came the explo-
sion. A sheet of flame leaped from the water; there was
a deafening roar, and a rain of fragments. The river
was littered with wreckage. The crowd screamed and
BLOWING UP THE BRIDGE 101
ran — anywhere, nowhere — dropped their bundles — lost
their friends and relatives — fell down and clambered up
again, — all the time screaming in brute fear.
There was another burst of flame, another roar,
another rain of wood and steel. The bridge still hung
across the stream, but it lay like a snake with its back
broken. A Belgian gunboat crawled near and began to
hammer the floating barges with solid shot. The roar
of the discharges was practically continuous. The firing
was less than fifty yards from us, and the leap of the
flame from the gun seemed almost to reach the pontoons
where the shells were striking. Two or three of the
barges listed slowly. Several sank. The remainder
floated, a tangle of wreckage, moored in the rapid tidal
current of the Scheldt.
Down the Canal au Sucre came soldiers flying from
the battlefields. Fifty Belgians appeared, then two Eng-
lish Tommies. Their despair when they saw that the
bridge was gone was pitiful. I could not stay to see if
they got across in some other way.
For Thompson and I retrieved our kits from the
Queen's and started off for the American Consulate.
We were absolutely alone now. Our friends had left the
city, and only we two were left to see the Germans come
in. The bombardment had ceased temporarily, although
we still could hear the booming of guns in the southern
forts. The Belgian black-yellow-and-red flew high on
the cathedral tower, untouched as yet.
102 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
A few Belgians were about the streets. One of them
suddenly threw up his hands, spun half round, and fell.
He was dead of apoplexy before we could reach him.
At the Marche aux Lits, a fire, larger than usual, ar-
rested us, and Thompson unpacked his moving-picture
camera and calmly cranked away until the falling walls
of the shops compelled us to move on.
The street-corner shrines of the Virgin, which one al-
ways associates with Antwerp, were empty of their
images; only the tinsel canopies remained along the
Place de Meir. The Red Cross hospital was idle; the
palace was deserted. Great holes showed in the street
and sidewalks and there was everywhere the dreary
wreckage of shops.
At the Consulate we found only the Belgian caretaker
and his wife. The American Consul General, the Vice-
Consul and the entire staff had left Antwerp by auto-
mobile the day before. We were not exactly proud of
our countrymen, but in a panic no one is master of his
actions and no one can judge another.
Soon the cannonading recommenced, and panicky
refugees came to the Consulate door for protection.
That Friday morning bombardment was the severest of
all, and did, as we discovered later, the greatest damage.
Yet right in the midst of it there was a sound of car-
riage wheels in the street below the Consulate windows,
the bell rang, and up came the coolest person in Antwerp.
BLOWING UP THE BRIDGE 103
"I'm Mrs. Ide," our visitor said. "I'm from Chi-
cago, and I live here en pension. I'm not afraid of the
Germans, but he is."
" Who is he? " I questioned.
" He is the man who keeps the boarding house. He's
out there." Mrs. Ide motioned to the carriage. " He's
the driver. He wants to be under the protection of the
American Consul."
We explained our anomalous status, but added that
we thought we could do as Consul General and Vice-Con-
sul respectively, and that in any event we intended to
defend Antwerp from the German invaders.
" My ! " said Mrs. Ide when we had ended this rig-
marole. " It sounds fine to hear good ' United States '
again when we have to listen to so much German."
And she pointed skyward, where the shells were scream-
ing.
She had hardly gone when a Belgian refugee ran in
and begged protection of the Consulate. His sister was
American Minister Brand Whitlock's cook, he explained,
and the poor fellow had reasoned it out that American
protection certainly was due the brother of such a func-
tionary.
All through that unhappy morning people came, and
we gave them what comfort we could. It was little
enough at best, yet they were pathetically grateful, and
I think it did all of us good to stand for an hour or two
in the shelter of the American flag.
io4 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
ENTER: THE GERMANS
At noon the bombardment ceased. It had been practi-
cally continuous for thirty-six hours. One hundred and
eighty-one houses had been destroyed by incendiary
shells, thirty-one houses had been partially burned, nine
houses totally destroyed by explosions, and five hundred
and fifty-six badly damaged. How many people were
killed or wounded I have never learned; shrapnel fire is
notoriously uncertain in its results, but there were about
twenty dead and wounded picked up in the streets and
there must have been bodies in the ruins of houses and
shops.
Friday morning the military authorities authorized
the city officials completely and without reserve to nego-
tiate to stop the bombardment. General Deguise and his
staff had gone westward with the army. Antwerp's old
burgomaster, Jan de Vos, the Spanish Consul, Senator
Alfred Rykmans, and Deputy Louis Franck presented
themselves in an automobile before the German outposts.
They were blindfolded and taken through the lines to
the town of Contich. Mr. Franck in his tall hat and
frock coat was spokesman.
It was a common story in Antwerp afterward that
the German General, Hans von Beseler, could not be-
lieve his eyes when the deputation appeared before him,
for there was not a man in uniform among them ! " I
will not receive them/' he stormed. " I will not treat
ENTER: THE GERMANS 105
with civilians. I have conquered one of the great
fortresses of the world/' he burst out, turning on Mr.
Franck, " and a civilian comes to render it up ! You
come to render it up ! — a man in a top hat ! " . . .
But the citizens of Antwerp did not yet know that
their beautiful city had capitulated. I left Thompson at
the Consulate and made a rapid inspection of the center
of town. In the Place Verte four big shells had
plowed into the earth, and the cathedral of Notre Dame
had at last been struck. Most of Belgian cathedrals
are not like Dutch Protestant churches — whitewashed
sepulchres, with barnacles of shops about their bleaching
hulls, so the destruction in its neighborhood had not
menaced the cathedral itself. But now in the south
transept, thirty feet from the ground, yawned a hole
four feet in diameter. I endeavored to find the cus-
todian, but they told me that he had fled. Later I found
a priest and a bystander named Peeters, and together we
searched for the keys. The priest babbled mournfully to
me of the sacrilege of the Germans: the mad ruthless-
ness with which they make war, the brutality with which
they treat priests and nuns, and their impious vandal-
ism.
At last we were inside. The beautiful old cathedral
of Notre Dame had stood inviolate and sacred since its
completion in 1450. It held the carved masterpieces of
a host of sculptors, and the famous " Descent from the
Cross " of Rubens, but fortunately all the paintings had
io6 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
been removed and hidden away before the bombardment
began, for there, on the flag-stones, directly in front of
the high altar, I picked up half a howitzer shell — one of
the latest and most terrible weapons known to men.
Fragments of the stone of which the cathedral is built
had been blown one hundred feet away from the spot
where the shell entered. Five sections of the great
stained-glass window in the south transept had been shat-
tered, another had been completely demolished, and an
altar rail was gouged with shot. " What sacrilege !
What scandal ! " the poor priest reiterated in an under-
tone. Our shoes gritted on bits of priceless stained glass
as we walked.
Three shells had struck near the Town Hall and had
pitted the south side of the building, but the Germans
had spared the principal architectural treasures of the
city. The museums were untouched.
New fires were springing up. New fugitives were
hurrying past, all going northward. But most of the
population still in Antwerp waited with the calm of
despair for the occupation by the Germans. No more
soldiers were to be seen, the Civic Guards had been dis-
banded and had disappeared, and a policeman at the
Town Hall told me the city had surrendered and that the
Germans were about to enter.
I walked up toward the avenue des Arts. The streets
were deserted and the city silent, except for the snap-
ping of flames in the burning houses. Suddenly I heard
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 107
a new sound — low, insistent, measured — the sound of
men marching. I turned a corner and looked. . . .
There, coming down the avenue in absolute silence, were
the Germans.
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION
The troops were advancing cautiously, like men who
fear a trap. There was no music, there were no flags.
First came some of the bicycle corps, then masses of
infantrymen and a few cavalrymen, then came floods of
soldiers. Column after column they rolled past, all in
the gray-green service uniform which is the most remark-
able disguise ever invented by mortal man. Line after
line they tramped by, anonymous as swarming bees, in-
distinguishable from the mass at fifty yards, stamping
the cobble-stones in perfect time, with the remarkable,
tireless, springy march-step of the German recruit.
There were sprays of field flowers in some of the guns,
and sprigs of green in the soldiers' coats.
The men glanced suspiciously at the shuttered win-
dows, as if they suspected that snipers lurked behind in
the darkened rooms. One madman's work just then
would have precipitated a massacre and the destruction
of the city. . . .
Von Hindenburg was still on the offensive in Russia,
and tremendous battles were in progress in France, yet
the captors of Antwerp were as fresh as if they had been
newly mobilized, and they were literally the flower of
io8 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
the Kaiser's armies. I did not see a man older than
twenty-eight, except two officers who flew by in a motor-
car.
Then came what seemed to be endless trains of artil-
lery, rumbling along behind the infantry. Field guns
and Austrian howitzers went past, each drawn by six
splendid horses, and nervous military automobiles ap-
peared, skirting the columns. Belgian civilians began to
come out, their curiosity having got the better of their
discretion. Several timidly gave directions to members
of the bicycle corps or officers in automobiles who
stopped to inquire the way.
Through the rue des Tanneurs to the Place de Meir
came another infantry column; but like the first, it en-
tered in silence, without music and without show of any
sort.
The infantrymen stacked arms in the streets and
rested. At the end of every alley and side street I could
see frightened people peering out at their masters. Oc-
casionally some one hurried furtively along close to the
buildings. Women wept and wrung their hands. A
few, perhaps more frightened even than the rest, ap-
peared in side streets with cups of coffee which they of-
fered to the Germans. A cafe in the Place de la Com-
mune opened, and long files of soldiers quietly formed
and bought beer from the trembling proprietor.
I walked up to a group of twenty German soldiers rest-
ing in a little park, and introduced myself.
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 109
" Are you English? " a young lieutenant asked mildly.
" Oh, no," I said. " I am an American."
" Ach, so! ... Where are the English?"
" You must not ask me," I laughed. " Americans are
neutral."
Trains of artillery kept pouring in. Down along the
water front beside the old Spanish Steen, a dozen big
guns were unlimbered and began shelling the west shore
of the Scheldt. The pontoon bridge was a hopeless
wreck, and the Belgians had scuttled all available river
craft and jammed the machinery of the canal locks, so
pursuit by the Germans was impossible. They contented
themselves with shelling the rearguards of the retreating
army. Boom, boom boom, boom, boom went the
German guns ; but the weary population of Antwerp was
past caring.
And I found myself careless too. Now that the thrill
of the bombardment had subsided, I felt an apathetic
calm. The sufferings of Belgium ceased to interest me.
... I looked up Thompson, and together we walked
leisurely back to our little house in the rue du Peage as
if we had left it only for a stroll. On our way we saw
new ruins caused by the shells, and a number of new con-
flagrations. We picked up bits of a shell which had
penetrated one of the round towers of the National Bank
building, and stared at the holes in the Palais de Justice.
Little house dogs, deserted by their masters, were scratch-
i io THE FALL OF ANTWERP
ing and whining disconsolately at locked doors, but we
walked by, indifferent to them. Our house we found still
intact, although the third and fourth floors where the
shrapnel shell had struck were little more than kindling.
The American flag still hung protectingly over the front
door.
We went inside. A starving cat yowled from the back-
yard, and we found dry bread and sour milk, and fed
it. Beside a rosebush in the yard was a sunken spot,
like a grave. Probably our Belgian hosts had buried
household treasures there.
But our curiosity was dead. West of us the Germans
were pounding away with their field guns. Occasionally
we heard dull reports which sounded like the Belgian
forts or the British armored trains replying. It may
have been the Belgian troops blowing up their forts. At
intervals came the sharp crackle of infantry firing in
platoons close at hand. But we did not care. We had
grown callous and careless from the strain of two days.
FIRST AID TO ANTWERP
Saturday morning, October tenth, the rest of the Ger-
man troops about Antwerp poured into the city. They
entered, like their predecessors, in perfect order and in
silence. We two lonely Americans stood in the office of
the deserted American Consulate overlooking the rue
Leys and watched the line of troops roll by. They, like
the others, were young and fit. We did not see Land-
FIRST AID TO ANTWERP m
Sturm among them. They passed like an army going
into action : gun after gun, regiment after regiment, Red
Cross wagons, commissariat wagons, more guns, more
regiments, and still more regiments. It seemed to be ar-
ranged especially for our benefit, and Thompson unlim-
bered his moving-picture camera and took photographs
of the entire proceeding.
Belgian agents de police were still at their posts, re-
inforced now by German sentries. It was interesting to
see how quickly the latter assumed the task of cleaning
up the city. By seven o'clock Saturday morning, squads
of citizens, men and women, were sweeping the side-
walks and streets under guard of German soldiers, and
as I threaded my way slowly along among the soldiers
massed in the narrow downtown streets, I found them
passing from hand to hand buckets of water to put out
the street fires. At the Marche aux CEufs, Belgian fire-
men were working on the ladders, German soldiers were
passing buckets below, and in one place the soldiers were
energetically engaged in working an old-fashioned six-
man fire pump.
On the Vieux Marche au Ble, soldiers crowded into a
little food shop. "Ah, ha," I said to myself; "here's
where I catch them looting." I wedged myself into the
shop in the wake of a stocky private. The tiny space
was jammed with Germans, and the nervous proprietor
was hacking away with incredible speed and skill at a
huge cheese. Sausages, cheese, cake chocolate, and bread
ii2 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
were what the soldiers were buying. The stock went
like wildfire, but not a soldier left the shop without
paying for his share. They paid in Belgian money.
Some of them had to stand about for eight or ten min-
utes after they had received their purchases before they
had an opportunity to pay, but they paid. They were
more like a crowd of picnickers buying out a rural
grocery than soldiers of a conquering army occupying
the capital of a kingdom.
A dozen Bavarians stood in the rue Aqueduc listen-
ing to the vituperations of an old Flemish woman. She
was berating them like schoolboys, absolutely fearless,
but they seemed to be taking it in excellent humor. I
think they understood about one word in six, for the
Flemish language is just enough like the German to be
hopelessly confusing at first. Suddenly one of the sol-
diers looked up at the cathedral spire, where the Belgian
flag had hung ever since the tragic day that Germany
sent her ultimatum to Belgium. There, crawling slowly
toward the top, was the black-white-and-red flag of the
invaders. It reached the peak and began to flutter in the
light breeze. The soldiers yelled delightedly. " We
must sing ! We must sing ! " shouted some one ; and the
long compact lines began to chant, Deutschland, Deutsch-
land iiber dies.
German marines were hard at work on the wreckage
of the pontoon bridge when I came out on the water
FIRST AID TO ANTWERP 113
front. A line of German cannon stood below the Span-
ish Steen, and across the Scheldt smoke rose lazily from
ruins of buildings set on fire by the shells. In the moun-
tain of debris discarded by Belgian and British in their
retreat, German soldiers were searching for serviceable
trophies. I saw a soldier worm out of the pile a brand-
new fencing mask and foils. He stared at them as if he
had no idea what they were for ; and indeed they looked
amusing enough in the heap of uniforms, rifles, bayonets,
cartridge boxes, cartridge clips, camp knives and forks,
swords, and scabbards which lay scattered in disorder
for more than one hundred and fifty feet along the edge
of the quay. Another German fished out of the mass
a beautiful Belgian presentation sword. He threw it
aside in disgust. The searchers were taking only service-
able things — leather straps, holsters, knives, and the
like.
The old Steen loomed dark above them as they
searched. The stony eyes of the tenth century seemed
to look very calmly on this last taking of Antwerp. The
Steen had seen many conquerors: William the Silent,
Alva, Farnese, Marlborough, Napoleon, Marshal Gerard
— why worry over one more? ... I walked up the
steep approach. A solitary Belgian guard stood at the
portal, his face haggard and his hands twitching. He
touched his cap to me very gravely. " Yes, monsieur can
go up ; but it is sad, very sad." " What is sad ? " " Why,
what the Germans have done." . . . The antique door
ii4 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
had been hacked through with an ax, the wrought iron
lock had been broken, and the quaint old halls invaded
in order that men might tear down the Belgian flag
which had floated there so many years. All over Ant-
werp, Belgian, British, and French flags still stood, un-
touched by the conquerors, but from the cathedral, the
Town Hall, and the summit of the Steen, Germany's
black-white-and-red now hung triumphant in the quiet
air.
ON THE ROAD TO HOLLAND
I had seen enough. Thompson elected to stay in Ant-
werp with his beloved cameras, so I set off on foot for
the Dutch frontier.
The streets in the northern part of Antwerp were
deserted, except for a few weeping women and children.
I saw men lurking in the alleys, but I did not stop to
talk with them. Twice I saw American flags floating
over shipping still in the river, but for the most part town
and river were deserted.
At the first bridge stood a detail of German soldiers.
" Is to pass verbotenf " I asked. " No/' they answered,
and I went on.
The northern basins were crowded with barges, but
the locks had been jammed and rendered useless. What
small boats there were had been stove in, so that they
could not be used to set troops across the river, but the
larger shipping was uninjured. Along the wharves were
ON THE ROAD TO HOLLAND 115
piled thousands of tons of coal and grain; probably the
most valuable booty in Antwerp. But the wharves, like
the streets, were deserted.
People still were fleeing from Antwerp. A few bolder
ones drifted back, evidently reassured since the firing had
ceased, but most were headed north. Many young men
went by me on bicycles, pedaling as if for dear life. I
stopped two of them and asked why they were leaving.
They told me incoherently that if they stayed in Ant-
werp they would be sent away by the Germans to fight
against the Russians. ... An old, old woman in stiffly
starched peasant cap and black gown, was borne along
in a wheelbarrow, bumping through the ruts in the nar-
row road. Her wooden shoes jolted against the barrow
rim, and her head nodded to right and left as if she were
a queen acknowledging the greetings of her subjects.
Her face had lost all human expression. It was like
lead, or like ashes. . . .
Suddenly I found myself in the very midst of fortifi-
cations. They were to right of me, to left of me, and in
front of me, — immense, silent, grassy banks, scarred
here and there with trenches and embrasures and gray
concrete gun-bases. My heart flew to my throat, for
those half -invisible, silent works seemed far more menac-
ing than any number of visible enemies. The Germans
might be there, or the Belgians. In any event, I had no
business spying about the defenses.
ii6 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
Then, for my need, an old peasant appeared. He
seemed like a gnome which had popped from the ground,
for I could have sworn the place was empty a moment
before. He was dressed in rags, and there was an odd
stubble of beard about his leathery face, but he looked
intelligent. He hobbled near and peered up at me in
silence.
" Do you speak French ? " I asked uncertainly.
" Oh, yes, monsieur."
" And will you show me the road to Holland ? "
" Gladly, monsieur."
The old fellow was a natural philosopher. He would
have delighted Voltaire or Rousseau. He had thought
deep thoughts, uncontaminated by the influence of the
schools, and as we walked he poured out his wisdom in a
feeble wheezy monologue.
" The war ? Ah, monsieur, the war, it is a curse. But
then, much in life is a curse, and we must bear it tran-
quilly. To live, that is the important thing. Men fight
each other, cheat each other, steal each other's land, lust
for one another's wives — yes, monsieur, it is true — but
we must live. We must bear all tranquilly. It is war.
It is life, n'est-ce pas? "
We walked together for a quarter of an hour through
the lines of fortresses and saw not a living soul. Those
great fortifications of Antwerp, the' impregnable ring
which General Brialmont had drawn about the metropolis
of Belgium, lay deserted and useless while an old man
ON THE ROAD TO HOLLAND 117
and a boy walked through them and moralized of
war.
I was alone beside the Scheldt again, sheltered by the
dykes from hostile eyes, but the impulse to see was ir-
resistible. I ran to the top of the ridge and looked back.
There was the dark silhouette of Antwerp, the lace-like
cathedral spire, the high buildings and factories, and the
low mass of houses. But up from the pile still rose black
columns of smoke to trouble the dark day. Antwerp
still was burning.
Eastward were the green embankments of the forts,
westward the broad dark river, and the reedy levels of
East Flanders. But northward! . . . Suddenly I felt
as if I had fled from a nightmare, as if nothing in Ant-
werp had been real, from my arrival and arrest as a spy,
through the terrible thirty-six hours of the bombardment
and the coming of the Germans. Before me were long,
level meadows, cultivated fields, patches of wood, and lit-
tle winding lanes with avenues of slender trees, alder
hedges, ditches, and lines of pollard willows. It was a
landscape to make a painter shout for joy. Hundreds of
cattle loafed beside the ditches or lazily browsed in the
grass. Colts and young calves frisked about, utterly in-
different to war. A flock of small birds flew by me,
singing. Far away a windmill turned, and thin church
spires marked quiet villages, sheltered in groves of
oaks and elms. Here there was no wreck; no devas-
u8 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
tation. Here life was real. Antwerp had been a
dream.
VLUCHTELINGEN
But an endless line of unhappy fugitives moved north-
ward through the quiet lanes. The flight, begun on
Wednesday, continued unabated on Saturday. Some-
times the narrow paved roadway was blocked with carts,
bicycles, and people. High-pooped Flemish farm wagons
piled with goods, abbreviated prairie schooners, queer
copies of the Deadwood coach, hand carts, dog carts,
ox carts — anything which ran on wheels or legs made
part of that tragic procession.1
A man hailed me from the door of a roadhouse. I
shouted back that I could not stop, but he insisted so
earnestly that I turned and went to him. He was a very
old man, bent with rheumatism and shrunken like a
ghost. He stood crazily clutching the jamb of the door
as he talked. To my amazement, he spoke English in
a voice that thrilled like a trumpet. He had seen and
recognized the little American flag in my coat.
" For God's sake, sir, can't you help us ? " he cried.
"You're an American, aren't you, sir? Isn't America
*Yet these fugitives, these " vluchtelingen," as they are called
in Flemish, were only part of an age-long flight. Flanders means
" land of the fugitives." A Fleming — it used to be pronounced
"fle-ming" — etymologically is a man who has fled from the old
German forests.
VLUCHTELINGEN 119
going to help us? Can't you do something for Belgium?
Don't you see that something must be done ? Surely your
country will help us! Oh, this is a black day for Bel-
gium ! "
If only I had known how America was to help! If
only I could have spoken with the tongue of prophecy
and told him of the work to be done by the Commission
for Relief in Belgium! But I did not know; I did not
know, and I could not answer him a word.
There were three men whom I passed, pushing a hand
cart. Half a minute afterward there was a shout behind
me, and I looked about to see one of the three running
toward me. He held a bottle of light beer in his hand,
which he insisted that I drink. The cart contained only
a few household treasures and half a dozen bottles — all
that the man had left in the world — but he felt that he
must share with the stranger. I drank, with tears in my
eyes, to him and to Belgium.
In all the little towns along the way, refugees rested
in utter exhaustion or camped out under frail shelters in
lanes, dooryards, and streets. I never before realized
how many old people there are in the world. Half of
these refugees seemed over sixty years old and practically
helpless. War kills the old like flies. Life owed them a
warm chimney corner, a friend or two, a pipe and a bot-
tle; instead of these, it had hurled them out into the
center of one of the most terrible cataclysms of history
and had chased them in panic from their homes and
120 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
native land. What such as these suffered during the
reign of terror in Antwerp and afterward can never be
imagined or described.
Every ditch along the roadside was littered with
things thrown away by the fleeing soldiers. There was
no escape over the river for the garrisons of the north-
ern fortresses, such as Saint Philippe, Oudendyk, and
Stabroeck, so they had joined the civilian fugitives and
had cast aside in their flight, uniforms, side-arms, wine
bottles, and every other sort of military impedimenta.
Caps and uniforms lay trampled in the mud ; empty bot-
tles bobbed grotesquely in the canals; the culverts were
stuffed with refuse; and all the farmers in the neighbor-
hood were salvaging military supplies.
Little peasant boys, their trousers rolled high, waded
thigh-deep in ooze and ditch water, fishing out clips
of cartridges and arms, and quarreling over their
finds. . . .
Late in the afternoon rain came, but the procession did
not slacken speed. Cyclists went by with heads down
and pedals spinning. Weary horses and wearier men
plodded steadily along in the face of the drizzle. Abso-
lute terror still was upon them. No one thought of stop-
ping for rest, for the Germans were somewhere behind.
They were in front of us, too. The rain stopped and
some of the fugitives seemed to have grown calmer,
when down the narrow, tree-bordered highway came a
AT THE FRONTIER 121
huge military automobile. Half a mile ahead I saw peo-
ple run out of the road, jump the ditches, flatten them-
selves against the hedges, and clamber over gates into
the turnip fields. An old man tumbled into a ditch and
lay motionless, half immersed in muddy water. Panic
was on again.
The car came thundering along, a great white flag
flapping from its wind-shield, and when it got nearer I
saw that two German officers and a civilian sat in the
tonneau. The civilian was one of the Belgian notables
told off to surrender the forts to the Germans, and the
car had just come from Fort Stabroeck. The eyes of
all in the automobile were fixed on the straight road
ahead. I do not think they noticed the panic their pass-
ing caused. They flew by without giving us a glance,
speeding back toward Antwerp.
AT THE FRONTIER
Hours passed. Austruweel, Wilmarsdonck, Oorderen,
Beerendrecht, and Sandvliet lay behind us. The frontier
could not be far away.
In the road ahead some one raised a happy shout, and
the long line of men and carts surged forward more
hopefully. Half a mile away appeared soldiers and a
number of wagons lying at the side of the road. As we
got nearer, I saw a little wooden sentry-box beneath the
avenue of trees ; still nearer, and a flag — not Belgian, not
German, but the red-white-and-blue of Holland — the
122 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
colors so comfortably like our own. This was the arbi-
trary, intangible line where war stopped and peace be-
gan. A few steps more and we were standing in the
midst of a group of friendly Dutch soldiers, all wearing
in their caps the pompon of the neutral House of Orange.
Most of the fugitives crossed the line and plodded on
mechanically as if they were blind and dumb. Some
sank exhausted to the ground and lay with faces buried
in the grass. A few prayed. Scarcely any smiled.
Panic still was upon them, — panic which they would feel
for days, and dream of for years. It was the kind of
elemental terror which falls on a people once in centuries.
Piles of muskets lay in the grass, where the fugitive
soldiers had been disarmed as they crossed the border.
The Belgians from the northern forts had come bringing
arms, ammunition wagons, automobiles, and even field
artillery and regimental flags, and fast as they had come,
the Dutch had disarmed them and led them away to be
interned until the end of the war.
Hundreds of soldiers had entered Holland by this
road. While I watched, two more, both infantrymen,
came in from the south. They were in uniform, torn
and battle-soiled, but they had already thrown away
their rifles, and they passed the frontier with eyes glazed
and mouths agape. A sentry led them to the side of the
road and left them there to rest. An hour afterwards
they came marching up the highway under guard of four
soldiers.
AT THE FRONTIER 123
One of them asked to speak with me, and the guards
willingly acquiesced.
"We are prisoners, monsieur, until the end of the
war," the Belgian explained. " Do you think our fami-
lies should go to London and wait for us there ? "
"Are your families here?" I asked in astonishment.
" Oh, yes, monsieur."
" You brought them with you ? "
" Oh, yes, monsieur. There is my wife : there is my
child." He pointed to a grief-stricken little woman, sit-
ting motionless on the ground; a three-year-old boy
sprawling beside her. " I could not leave them to the
Germans," the man continued. " My comrade and I
went back to our homes and brought our families away
with us. Now we must go to the military prison camp
and leave them. Will England care for them if they go
to London ? "
Would England care? England must care! "Oh,
yes, indeed, England will care for them," I promised
with my whole heart and soul. " Have no fear. Rest
tranquil. England will care for them. And when the
war is over, perhaps you and they will come to my coun-
try— to America."
" To America ! " His face brightened wonderfully.
" Monsieur is American ? 'Au revoir, then ; au revoir. I
will come to America. Some day I too shall be an
American, perhaps. Au revoir, mon compatriote."'
And he and his comrade marched off with their Dutch
124 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
guards, leaving the grief -stricken little wife and the
three-year-old boy sitting motionless in the grass beside
the road.
A few hundred yards away was a small railroad sta-
tion where I found two or three hundred Belgians
crushed into a tiny train waiting to start for Bergen op
Zoom. Most of them had sat in the train since ten
o'clock in the morning. Few had eaten any food. There
were many children among them, all strangely quiet, like
little frightened animals, while their elders whispered
breathless stories of the horrors in Antwerp.
" Oh, monsieur ! " A fat housewife, wedged into the
narrow space between a seat and the car wall, was telling
the story. " Oh, monsieur ! It was terrific — the sound
of them — the bombshells. They screeched and yowled
and spat, like cats that fight themselves. Terrible! I
ran! Oh, how fast I ran! I am breathless with think-
ing of it. Oh, those bombshells ! Oh, holy Mary ! "
An old man took up the narrative. " Yes, and in les
Jardins Botaniques such sadness! There the keeper of
the menagerie shot down all the wild beasts — all the ani-
mals of the jungle — for fear they would escape and bite
the poor people in the streets. Oh, it was sad, so sad!
When the bombshells began to fall on the Jardins, the
keeper took up his gun. One by one he shot them —
boom! boom! — the big lions, and the wolves, and the
foxes, and the panther, and the spotted leopard — they
AT THE FRONTIER 125
died, screaming horribly. Then the keeper came last to
the cage of the brown bear. You remember the brown
bear in the menagerie, madame? — he was so kind, so
gentle. A child could pet him. And he had been taught
to hold up his paws together, as the priest does in the
cathedral of a Sunday, praying.
" When the keeper came with the loaded gun, this
bear put up his paws, so, praying him not to shoot. And
the keeper burst out with a great cry, and went up near
to the bear, and embraced him lovingly through the bars
of the cage. And then he took up the gun — and — boom!
boom! — he shot him."
"Oh, but it is sad!"
" Yes, and so sad is the howling of the poor forsaken
dogs all the night long in Antwerp; — thousands of dogs
abandoned by their masters and left to starve. I cannot
sleep for thinking of them, locked in the empty houses,
scratching and sniffing at all the doors, and all the time
howling with fear and the hunger. Ugh ! it is horrible,
horrible, messieurs. The poor animals! How they suf-
fer ! How they suffer ! "
" But the atrocities of these Germans ! In war they
become cannibals. I have an uncle who is of the mili-
tary, and he found on the battlefields after Malines "
The raconteur spun a yarn as old and as vile as war
itself; a tale that was typical of thousands which have
been accepted as Gospel truth since this war began. •
It nettled me, and I interrupted him in the most dra-
126 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
matic moment of the story. :< You must not tell such
tales," I said severely. " They will keep Belgians from
going back, and you must go back to save yojur country."
The man shrugged his shoulders significantly. " Ah,
monsieur, you do not know. If we go back, as you ad-
vise, we shall have to come away again tomorrow. The
French are going to capture Antwerp. Already their
army is only a few kilometers away. Perhaps they too
will shell the city. We do not want to go back to be
shelled a second time."
" Yes, messieurs, that is true," a third said. " Besides,
there are the Russians. Already they are near Berlin,
and they will come down through Germany to help us.
The Russians are a mighty people. Maybe they will
come soon. We will not go back until they come." . . .
I held my peace. Cows were coming in from the fields
about the station, ready to be milked. For the time be-
ing they seemed more interesting, more intelligent than
the sad-eyed men and women in the train. They were
calm and even-tempered and self-respecting beasts.
They read no newspapers, paid no taxes, went to no
churches, and waged no wars. They ate grass and gave
milk. That was life.
We milked them almost into the mouths of the little
Belgians in the train, for as fast as the tepid milk
squirted into the tin pails we bought it and carried it to
the youngsters. But it was painful to see the children
drink. They sucked at the foaming liquid without a
DUTCH HOSPITALITY 127
trace of eagerness or enjoyment. They seemed to have
grown centuries old and indifferent to everything about
them.
DUTCH HOSPITALITY
Shortly before nightfall we pulled out for Bergen op
Zoom. That hour's ride is unforgettable. Fugitives of
days before were crowded along the roads and out into
the fields like grasshoppers. There was not a foot of
space along the highway left vacant by their vehicles.
One after another, as far as the eye could see in either
direction, carts crawled along through the dusk. High
Flemish wains rode like ships above a tossing sea of hu-
man heads; ponderous, underslung farm wagons came
by, hauled by stout Percheron horses; there were milk
carts pulled by dogs ; delivery wagons, out-of-date family
coaches, American carriages, hay wagons, victorias,
omnibuses, and ox-carts, all trundling along in that slug-
gish stream. Thousands were their own carryalls and
beasts of burden; they pushed baby carriages or wheel-
barrows, piled high with goods; they carried awkward
bundles on their backs, pedlar fashion; they bore bas-
kets on their arms, or little parcels done up in towels
slung from their elbows. And there were hundreds plod-
ding along the road who carried nothing at all ; who had
come away from their homes leaving absolutely every-
thing behind.
Cattle and even flocks of sheep marched with the hu-
128 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
man herd. Once I saw a little goat run out of the
throng, bleating piteously. Cats and birds in cages rode
high upon the wagons, and scores of tired dogs padded
along behind their tired masters.
As night grew darker, fires popped up under the alder
hedges. Camps were pitched, pallets of straw spread,
and people cooked their suppers over hot coals. Some
improvised rough lodgings for the night under their
wagons on the bare ground, or in the open fields under
the stars. Every farmyard was an oasis of rest and re-
freshment, where food was to be had for the asking un-
til the supply was exhausted.
Of course there was not nearly enough food for all
who asked. Most of that sad army went dinnerless and
supperless, and most of it still marched. Its own inertia,
not its will, seemed to carry it on, and a strange sound
came from it as it moved — a continuous droning, a low
murmur, like heavy breathing, which filled all the night
air. That sound seemed to come from the earth and the
sky and the trees and the grass, as well as from the
marching men. It was a sound more terrible than hu-
man wailing. It was as if all nature mourned, and as
if this vast movement through the night were the funeral
procession of a nation. . . .
The little Dutch villages along the way blazed with
lights to welcome the wanderers. Every house was full.
People gladly slept on doorsteps and pavements to give
DUTCH HOSPITALITY 129
up their beds to the Belgians. Every drop of milk and
every ounce of bread was at their command. Schools
were turned into emergency hospitals and churches into
lodging houses for them. Factories became refugee
camps, and in every imaginable way the Dutch tried to
cope with the awful situation which the war had thrust
on their neighbors.
The Belgians contributed a remarkable invention to all
that the Dutch were doing. This was a refugee directory.
I first saw it at Woensdrecht, and afterwards in half a
dozen villages in southern Holland. Conspicuous house
walls or fences in every one of these villages were
chalked over with the names and addresses of Belgians
stopping there. The directories were scrawled up along
the principal streets, and there were hundreds of names
in each list.
The Myer Family
Dordrechtstraat 12
Marcelline Smit
Roosenstraat 50
Julie le Maitre
Waterstraat 17, City
— so the notices read.
But there were scores and hundreds of families whom
no directory could help that night; families whose
fathers, or mothers, or children, or grandchildren had be-
come separated from the others in the mad panic of
flight and had not yet been found. Some of them would
130 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
never be found. The newspapers of Holland were to be
filled for weeks with advertisements for the lost. On
that tragic night, every town in southern Holland had
its quota of lost children, and every town had its Bel-
gian Rachels, weeping, and not to be comforted.
Bergen op Zoom, a quaint ugly Dutch town on the
main line of railway from Flushing to Rotterdam, roared
like a metropolis that night. It was jammed with refu-
gees. They lay about in the streets, on the doorsteps
and sidewalks. One could not walk without stepping on
them. Every house and church and school was at their
disposal, but still there were thousands too many. They
were bedded down on the bare boards in church pews,
and on the polished floors of the best parlors in town.
They slept in and under carts standing in the streets.
Women in the pangs of childbirth were placed on cots
improvised of school benches and mattresses, and the
sick and infirm were made as comfortable as possible on
loose straw piled in sheds and barns.
Bakeries were commandeered to supply free bread to
all who asked. The milk supply was taken up for the
exclusive use of the children. Groceries were gutted.
All blankets, bandages, old clothes, and household medi-
cines had already been solicited by the Red Cross for the
needy by the time we got there. Carriages and wagons
were all in the service; men, women, and even children
were at work, and Bergen op Zoom on the night of
DUTCH HOSPITALITY 131
October tenth, 1914, reached the heights of unselfishness.
But so did all Holland. From the northern tip of
Friesland and Gelderland to southwest Zeeland, there was
not a Dutch community which lacked its share of fugi-
tives. The Government appropriated large sums for the
relief of the refugees on the day the flight began.
It now ran free trains into all sections of the country,
thus distributing the burden as equably as possible. The
spirit of the Dutch was splendid. They laid aside in a
moment the animosities of years: all the sordid in-
heritance of hatreds and distrust which makes up half
the national feeling of the European nations. They for-
got the Revolution of 1830, which resulted in a final
separation of the Belgian Provinces from those we call
Holland. They forgot that it is a Dutchman's patriotic
duty to dislike his Belgian neighbor. And it is to their
eternal honor and glory that they opened their country,
already suffering terribly from the effects of the war
among their neighbors, without question and without
hope of reward, to the disinherited hordes that over-
whelmed them.
Free trains were running east and west from Bergen
op Zoom. While we waited on the crowded station plat-
form, three trains were dispatched for Flushing : one for
refugees, two for captive Belgian soldiers. Men,
women, children, and luggage, we blocked the platforms,
shivering and half famished, from seven o'clock until
132 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
long after ten. A tiny Belgian baby slept in my arms.
I had taken it from its exhausted mother, and she had
not even turned her eyes to see what had happened to
her baby, or why. Another child slept leaning against
my knees. The older people stood numb and dumb. We
watched human beings ride away like tired cattle, and
when they had gone, others dully took their places. The
fugitives to the last man seemed utterly exhausted.
Late at night the station gates swung open once again,
and there appeared the head of a long procession of cap-
tive Belgian soldiers. Some were in civilian clothes and
carried awkward bundles on their backs, like many of
the other fugitives; some were bareheaded and coatless,
shivering in the cold October night air; a few still bore
their army blankets in great white sausage rolls across
their shoulders and under their arms; two or three had
brown loaves of bread in their hands, and bottles, which
the Dutch had given them, in their pockets ; but most of
them had nothing at all except the uniforms on their
backs. There were at least two thousand of them.
They slouched in carelessly, without order or direc-
tion, between two files of Dutch guards. Going to prison
until the end of the war was not a pleasant prospect,
even if it is called " internment." But when the
refugees on the platform caught sight of the head of
that procession and realized that these were the men of
King Albert's army, they sent up a cheer which thrilled
those tired soldiers like a bugle-call. It was marvelous
ATROCITIES 133
to hear such a cheer in the midst of so much suffering.
The long, irregular lines stiffened and became soldierly
once more; the men's eyes flashed as they returned the
shouts with a will ; and when two long trains came in to
take them away to military prison, the Belgian soldiers
went into the cars still cheering and singing.
ATROCITIES
It was almost midnight when I climbed painfully into
the Rotterdam Express at Bergen op Zoom. Every
nerve ached and trembled. My arms hung paralyzed at
my sides ; my thin clothing crackled with cold ; I had no
coat. But nothing seemed to matter, for life and death
were like old friends and pain was like a brother; all
problems seemed simple, and all emotions clean.
I stumbled into the first open compartment of the
first-class carriage, fumbling at my belt of gold-pieces to
make sure they were safe. There was an empty seat,
and I dropped into it, hardly noticing my only neighbor
— a dark-eyed lady of about thirty-five, sitting directly
across from me.
I leaned my cheek against the cold window-glass and
stared out into the night, "seeing things." It was a
mental trick I had learned when tired — to visualize
rapidly whole trains of pictures, so that they fly by in
the darkness as against a screen.
The crisp voice of the lady in the seat opposite inter-
rupted my picture making. Her eyes studied me with
134 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
the confident look of the born aristocrat who knows and
feels instinctively the privileges of birth. It was not
strange that she was traveling alone. In wartime every-
thing is possible. Boats from Folkestone to Flushing
went at all hours, for German submarines were active;
and on this night of nights, all trains were hopelessly off
schedule. Our train, the boat-train, would probably
reach Rotterdam after two o'clock in the morning.
" You are English? " she asked.
" No, I am an American. But all my ancestors were
from the British Isles."
" I should have thought you English." Her eyes
examined me carefully: tousled hair, soft collar, and
coatless shoulders.
" You compliment me," I said, " since you see me
half -dressed and half -frozen. But you are English."
" By birth, yes. By marriage I am Dutch. My hus-
band is head of a department of government in the
Hague." She spoke a name well-known in Holland. " I
have been two months in England visiting, and am just
returning. . . . Tell me," she exclaimed, without alter-
ing the well-bred modulation of her voice, "have you
seen any of those vile Huns?"
" I have just come from Antwerp."
" So I thought. I should like to burn the whole Ger-
man nation, as one's gardener burns the worms in an
apple-tree ! Did you see any atrocities ? "
" No."
ATROCITIES 135
She appeared to be disappointed. " My family is well-
known in England," she said. " I have friends — army
officers high in the service, you know. They have told
me unspeakable things. In an English hospital I saw
two little Belgian children with their hands cut off at the
wrists "
" Don't ! " I interrupted.
" You don't want to hear about them? " she asked in
evident annoyance.
" Forgive me," I begged. " I've just come from the
midst of the war. My nerves are a bit on edge. I've
seen so much today."
" Then you have seen things," she said positively.
" Now I want to hear about them. Tell me exactly what
you have seen ! "
" Shall I tell you how the Germans came into Ant-
werp?"
" Please do. Did they commit any atrocities? "
" No," I said. " They came in very quietly. I went
up to the first officer I saw and began to talk with him.
Do you know the first thing he asked me? It was the
same thing you asked. ' Are you English ? ' And he
didn't seem to care one way or the other. He asked me
politely, just as you would ask."
" But didn't the Germans shoot any citizens? "
" No," I said.
She stared at me with sudden dislike and suspicion.
"Are you pro-German?" she demanded.
136 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
" Not in the least/' I returned. " I am heart and soul
pro-Belgian, and I want the Allies to win the war."
She seemed doubtful. Her dark eyes bored into me,
as if to lay bare the falsehoods hiding behind my tired
face. "Didn't the Belgians do anything?"
"What do you mean?"
" Did they let those murderers come into Antwerp
without fighting to the last man ? "
" Oh, they fought, and the English fought, too, splen-
didly," I went on. " But when the bombardment had
lasted thirty-six hours, and the army had gone away,
there wasn't anything more to do."
" I should have shot at the Germans from the win-
dows! Why, officers I know tell me they have found
women's bodies ravished after they were dead, and there
was a girl eighteen years old in one of the London hos-
pitals whose breasts had been hacked off."
" Please don't ! " I implored her.
"Why?" she asked angrily. "People should know
these things ! "
" You don't understand ; you can't understand. I
have just seen some of the saddest and most terrible
things in the world: the sight of a whole nation in a
panic, running away from its country. I've seen thou-
sands of old people, and children, and even little babies.
I've seen people of every sort : peasants, aristocrats, and
merchants. I've talked with them, walked with them,
ridden with them, and stood with them in the cold; and
ATROCITIES 137
yet I've hardly heard those poor people say one hateful
word. During all this terrible week they've been as sim-
ple as little children — just wanting to live, and eat, and
sleep, and be in company with other people. They've
almost forgotten how to hate."
Her fine eyes narrowed. " Don't say that. It's hor-
rible even to think it. Forget to hate the Huns? — noth-
ing in the world could persuade me to do that! Oh, I
hope and pray every night for the time when our sol-
diers are in Germany and can pay them tit for tat ! "
I must have winced.
" The trouble with you is, you have been too close to
it. You are abnormal just now," she concluded.
She did not speak again until we were rolling into the
station at Rotterdam at half -past two in the morning.
I got her luggage out of the racks, and piloted her
safely to a taxi-cab.
" Good-by," she said, giving me her cool finger tips.
" I'm glad me met, although you've disappointed me.
Give me your address. On Monday I am going to send
you newspapers telling of the atrocities." *
*A discussion of Belgian atrocities has no place in this book.
The foregoing chapter records a mood; not a judicial decision.
But for those who desire trustworthy evidence by an American
eye-witness, I suggest Arthur Gleason's Young Hilda at the Wars
and Golden Lads, published by the Century Company, New York,
1915 and 1916.
138 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
RELIEF WORK IN HOLLAND
Ten days later I was speeding from Rotterdam to the
Belgian border with a yachtful of victuals and clothing
for the vluchtelingen. One of the secretaries of the In-
ternational Court of Arbitration, Dr. M. P. Rooseboom,
a nervous, slender, active gentlemen, quick in his sym-
pathies, and in appearance the antithesis of the stolid
stage Dutchman, had solicited food and clothing for the
refugees as soon as they came into Holland, and bor-
rowed from one of his friends a fine steam yacht to take
the supplies to the towns along the frontier where they
were most needed. I went as his guest.
All available space on the yacht was piled with bags
of rice, beans, coffee, tubs of lard and butter, cheeses big
as cartwheels, packages of underclothing for women and
children, and more than eight hundred loaves of bread.
Dr. Rooseboom had been in Liege while the battle still
was on. He and several other Red Cross volunteers
from Holland were working their way up the Meuse,
shells flying, bridges being blown up, the shriek and
thunder of bombardment deafening them.
Suddenly, he said, they noticed beside the river a
slender steel camp table, its legs half buried in mire,
three or four wine bottles on it, and an immense map
spread across its top, over which hung a general,
propped by his elbows, studying the chart oblivious to
the din. His chair and four or five other chairs stand-
RELIEF WORK IN HOLLAND 139
ing in the mud were of priceless mahogany and had been
taken from a nearby chateau.
Dr. Rooseboom was introduced to the general. He
was von Emmich, commander of the Tenth Army
Corps, the captor of Liege. " Ah," said he, " I know
you. You are the son of General Rooseboom, whom I
met at the Prussian manoeuvers in 1897."
When Dr. Rooseboom told his father of the en-
counter, the latter looked grave. " I remember it well,"
he said. " The Germans charged in close formation.
' You will sacrifice thousands upon thousands needlessly
if you drive your men like that/ I said to a group
of German officers who, like myself, were watching the
manoeuvers. One of them, a young colonel, replied,
' Don't trouble yourself about that. We have them
to lose ! ' It was von Emmich." . . .
Barges, loaded with refugees, lay moored on the broad
rivers and in the canals. It was wash-day, and their red,
blue, white, and gray flannels flapped from lines hung
across the decks like jaunty flags in the keen wind.
At nightfall we reached Hansweert and dined in a
small hotel crammed with Belgian refugees and Dutch
soldiers. Rain beat the roof in a deluge. Clouds of
tobacco smoke and the steam of wet clothes drying be-
fore a small stove smothered us, and everybody talked
of Antwerp.
After dinner, a Belgian in a great fur coat began the
140 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
story of a German defeat at Ostend : the Germans were
in full flight, King Albert personally was in command
of the Allies, and he had just issued a proclamation from
Ostend forbidding his people returning to Belgium until
the war was over!
" But the Germans occupied Ostend four days ago,"
Dr. Rooseboom volunteered, " and the King of Belgium
is in France."
The Belgian turned on him furiously. " Nay ! Nay !
That is not so," he thundered.
" Here is the Nieuwe Rotter damsche Courant telling
about it."
The Belgian swept the newspaper aside. " It is not
so."
" No matter. But where is this proclamation? " The
commander-in-chief of our little relief expedition ad-
dressed himself to the roomful.
No one answered.
" Isn't it a shame," he said to me in English. " Louis
Franck of Antwerp is in Holland appealing to the
refugees to return to Belgium. The King and the Gov-
ernment at Havre have told them to go back. But if
they spread stories like this, they'll never go home, and
they must go, for Belgium's sake as well as for Hol-
land's." He turned again to the fur-coated Belgian.
" Look here, mynheer," he began, " can you tell me
where "
His adversary turned the tables very neatly. " These
RELIEF WORK IN HOLLAND 141
Dutchmen are paid by the Germans to tell us tales," he
whispered loudly to the man at the next table. . . .
Next morning we were in Ter Neuzen, a beautiful
medley of one-story houses, steep red-tiled roofs, small
mullioned windows, tiny chimneys, claret-red brick walls,
and narrow alleys. Refugees were not allowed to stay
long in Ter Neuzen, because it is a fortified place, and
the Dutch feared that German spies might come with
the vluchtelingen. But the fugitives were allowed to rest
there and even to spend the night. The bare little barn
of a Protestant church had been crowded with them, and
pious ladies of the town had given up their neatly em-
broidered church cushions so the refugees might sleep
comfortably in the pews.
The church vestibule was piled with these cushions,
soiled and much dilapidated after a week under the heads
and heels of refugees. The municipal authorities had
just condemned them to be burned. An apple-cheeked
old vrouw was fishing gingerly about in the pile.
" Ja" she explained. " I gave them my cushion, the
poor Belgians, but it was a very nice cushion, all em-
broidered, and now I want it back again."
We left her still searching. . . .
In the warm sanctuary of the Roman Catholic chapel,
a score of Belgian women and children were at prayer.
Incense from the early mass still clung about the pretty
little church, and yet it seemed all full of sighs and tears.
H2 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
Two small girls, with eyes red from weeping, stood
apart, their lips trembling as they sent up their childish
petitions. I was told that they had lost both father and
mother in the mad flight from Antwerp.
In Sas van Ghent on the Belgian frontier, we found
five thousand refugees still quartered on the town.
More than two thousand were in ships along the canals,
most of them able to pay for their support. There were
six hundred paupers. For a week the town authorities
had been passing fugitives along to the less crowded
ports farther north at a rate of several thousands a
day.
But the poor who remained were fortunate. Sas van
Ghent lies cheek by jowl with the beautiful Belgian town
of Zelzaete, where King Albert and Queen Elizabeth
spent two nights in their flight to Ostend and the Yser,
and it possesses a huge phosphate factory, owned by Bel-
gian capitalists, and idle since the beginning of the war.
The Dutch turned all the newcomers into the vast fac-
tory. They filled store-rooms and offices with straw, col-
lected all the blankets in town, set doctors promptly to
work, and had the situation well in hand from the
start.
In the heart of the works was an immense building,
large as a circus, where the Belgians camped by thou-
sands. High overhead was a wilderness of tracks and
steel supports and traveling cranes, but the dirt floor was
RELIEF WORK IN HOLLAND 143
clear of obstruction, and people slept, cooked, washed,
and ate on the bare ground. After a day or two, a
genius got to work, begged lumber from the authorities,
and set about building himself a house of uncut boards
and straw. Forty or fifty others followed his example,
and the results were excellent. The dwellings, no larger
than pig-stys, were exactly the sort of houses our an-
cestors were building three thousand years ago, and
formed as quaint a village as the famous Swiss lake-
houses. They gave a delightful sense of privacy and
ownership. Blankets or old coats hung over the open-
ing which served as door and window, and straw stuck
through the chinks between the boards as it does through
the ribs of a scarecrow. Little wooden shoes stood be-
side the huts, for there were plenty of children among
the refugees. Once I saw a real French bisque doll ly-
ing in a cradle whittled from a piece of board. One of
the more aristocratic huts had a little board fence about
it, to keep the baby from running away, and the mother
was industriously scrubbing at a pile of clothes in a pail,
and hanging them on the fence to dry.
There came a clop clip of little wooden shoes across
the hard dirt floor, and a five-year-old vluchtelingetje
(little refugee girl) darted by us. She was playing hide-
and-seek with another youngster, dodging awkwardly
about among the little human stys. It must have been
a great adventure for children to camp out with so
many playmates in such strange surroundings, to eat
144 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
strange food, to play strange games, and at night to hear
bloodcurdling tales of what the Germans do to little
children !
The phosphate factory was paradise compared with
camps in some other towns along the Belgian-Dutch
border.
CITIES OF REFUGE
In Hulst, which we next visited, the coming of the
Belgians had been tragic. A small town in the neighbor-
hood was looted by the frantic fugitives before Dutch
troops could arrive and restore order. Hulst itself for
two nights and days was like chaos. Men, women, chil-
dren, vehicles, and a small army of Belgian soldiers over-
whelmed the town.
By far the greater portion of the troops got safely to
the Yser. Eye-witnesses have told me how they came
along the dykes, tired, dirty, discouraged, but how they
turned at a word of command and went back into battle,
singing. It will never be forgotten how the doughty
Belgians held their share of the line in the November bat-
tles. The fact that the army retired in safety from Ant-
werp is counted a Belgian success, in this war of mobile
armies and not of fixed fortresses. Stories were current
of General von Beseler's chagrin at this. There were
even legends of his suicide in Ghent. But in August,
1915, he reappeared again in military annals as con-
queror of the Russian fortress of Brest-Litovsk, for
CITIES OF REFUGE 145
which he received the blue ribbon of the Prussian order
" pour le Merited
The British lost at Antwerp three hundred of their
eight thousand men. The Belgian losses have never been
reported. But in addition to the killed, wounded, and
missing, twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty Bel-
gian soldiers and one thousand five hundred and sixty
British soldiers and marines fled to Holland with the
civil population, and were interned. At Hulst, auto-
mobiles full of high officers of the Belgian army arrived
ahead of their troops. Then came the men, the under-
sized, swarthy, discouraged-looking soldiers whom I had
seen marching across the pontoon bridge at Antwerp,
completely demoralized now and flying for their lives.
Their retreat had been cut off southwest of Saint
Nicolas.
A day and a night they came straggling into Holland.
There were wounded in that rout — men with their heads
awkwardly bandaged up, or their arms in slings made of
the sleeves of their shirts. Many limped. Some were
bareheaded. Some had thrown away their overcoats, so
they could run the faster, and the fronts of their uni-
forms were soaked with perspiration. Dismounted cav-
alrymen, their blood-red trousers flapping as they walked,
came with the blue uniformed infantrymen. Many of
the uniforms were torn and soiled: the whole back of
one overcoat had been cut away by a shell. A color
sergeant marched in, still clinging to a dirty, drooping
146 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
battle-flag. Field artillery and ammunition wagons were
part of that strange procession, the drivers humped list-
lessly above their horses, and the lines dragging. Com-
missariat wagons, hospital afnbulances, Red Cross auto-
mobiles, and omnibuses came over into Holland with
the army. And perhaps most pathetic of all, a bedrag-
gled regimental band marched in, half the men still car-
rying their cornets and drums and horns — a hideous
travesty of the pomp and circumstance of war.
Thousands brought their rifles, but most were un-
armed. In Hulst I saw a pile of Belgian guns sixty feet
long and six feet high, corded up like firewood, and a
heap of cartridges, at least twenty bushels of them, ly-
ing under a rough tarpaulin on the ground. In addition
to these spoils, there was a small hill of bayonets, car-
tridge belts, side-arms, revolver holsters, camp kits, sap-
pers' axes, and shovels, piled helter-skelter in the market-
place.
An immense tent was erected in the square before the
Town Hall, and civilian refugees were camped on straw
under its thin shelter, in a hideous, beast-like common-
wealth. The Gothic cathedral in the center of the town,
centuries old and marvelously beautiful, became a camp
for soldiers waiting to be interned. The town schools
were emergency hospitals. There were thirty-seven pre-
mature births in one of these. School benches with a mat-
tress over them served as maternity cots. Every rag of
cloth and every drop of medicine suddenly became price*-
CITIES OF REFUGE 147
less. The sick lay on pallets spread flat on the floor in
the schoolrooms, and Sisters of Charity kept the place
as neat as the neatest metropolitan hospital.
The bread supply had been exhausted days before we
came. Most of the fugitives lived on boiled beans,
cooked in ten great cauldrons in an open courtyard.
There were crowds of Belgians jammed about the en-
closure, waiting to be allowed their turn inside, and they
were ravenous as beasts. No dishes or spoons were to
be had. Men, women, and little children brought empty
tins, bowls, or fragments of old crockery to hold their
share of the precious food, and they ate from little
wooden shovels which they had whittled out for them-
selves. No one knew how many vluchtelingen were in
Hulst, but on the day before, in a nearby village of
one thousand inhabitants, there had been twenty-three
thousand Belgians.
It had poured rain all day. I stepped out of the in-
cessant floods into the shelter of the tent on the market-
place, and stumbled over a baby carriage. I looked fur-
ther into the stuffy, malodorous dusk of the tent. There
was another baby carriage, and another, and another.
. . . Some proud poet should write the Ode to the Baby
Carriage! — that democratic chariot of the children of
men. It had been everywhere in the tragic procession
from Antwerp. It had trundled over roads, it had rid-
den high on carts, it had traveled strapped to the handle-
i48 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
bars of bicycles, and always it had held the most precious
possessions of its owners. Sometimes these possessions
were family pictures, or silver, or fine linen ; but usually,
more precious than all these, it held the Belgian babies.
Reverently I bare my head to the Baby Carriage: it is
the vehicle of civilization.
A STORY OF KING ALBERT
Human beings in agony are prone to curse Fate and
to blame even friends for their pain. The tear-worn
faces of the refugees masked bitter fancies. They told
many tales of treachery in connection with Antwerp.
And it is hardly to be wondered at. Fast as the Ger-
mans advanced through Belgium, a part of the popula-
tion retreated before them. These migrations flowed in
great waves. There was a general exodus from Brussels
before the German troops occupied it on August twenti-
eth: the rich going to England, the poor to Antwerp,
or over the border into Holland. And as the tides of
battle ebbed and flowed through the country between
Malines and Ghent, the peasant population joined the
urban fugitives, most of them crowding into Antwerp.
They felt absolutely safe in the circle of the famous Ant-
werp forts. Had not military experts declared the
fortifications impregnable? Then, in less than a week,
three of the outer forts fell, and the Germans were ham-
mering at the gates.
Stories of collusion between Belgian officers and the
A STORY OF KING ALBERT 149
Germans found many believers. Accounts of reinforced
concrete gun-bases found under tennis courts in Malines,
Duffel, and Contich, were common. When I visited Dr.
Henry van Dyke, American Minister in the Hague, his
first question bore on these stories of treachery. " There
are many rumors here in connection with the fall of
Antwerp," he explained. " They seem to have some
foundation. There undoubtedly were Germans in the
Belgian army."
Many Belgians blamed Churchill's ill-fated expedition
to Antwerp, declaring that the city could have been saved
a useless bombardment and its inhabitants spared the hor-
rors of flight, if the British had not interfered. They
had forgotten the devotion of their King and Queen;
they had forgotten the self-sacrificing patriotism of the
Common Council of Antwerp which unanimously voted
on October fourth that it was " the unchangeable wish
of the population to see pursued to the very end the de-
fense of the fortress of Antwerp, without any other
thought than that of the national defense, and without
any regard to the dangers run by persons or private
property."
A slant-eyed Belgian girl, with wet hair, and a big
shawl drooping about her narrow shoulders, sat in the
malodorous tent on the market-place in Hulst, telling a
story to a group of refugees. Outside, the rain fell
steadily. It sluiced and spotched and oozed from the
150 THE FALL OF ANTWERP
atmosphere, as if the air were a cold, wet sponge. It
crawled down necks and up trouser-legs. It sopped
cheeks and beaded eyebrows. It snuggled into the roots
of the hair, and churned up mud that clung like cottage-
cheese.
The vluchtelingen were huddled together in the dismal
shelter of the tent. A couple of lanterns gave all the
light there was, except the glow of a pipe. An old Bel-
gian sat smoking, in spite of the regulations imposed by
the Dutch, and underfoot was enough loose straw to fire
a city.
The girl allowed me to join the group, and retold the
story for my benefit.
" It is a story of King Albert, m'sieu," she said, by
way of preface. " A story of our King and of my
brother. You would hear it ? "
" Please, mademoiselle. If you please."
" In French, m'sieu," she went on; " yes? Well, then !
Our officers were bad, all bad. That is why we lost."
I nodded in sympathy.
" Always they were drinking or idling. My brother,
he was of the artillery, stationed near Antwerp. And one
afternoon comes the King, alone, marching into the fort
on foot. The King stared about him as one does in a
dream, for there was not an officer, not one single officer,
only private soldiers and one sergeant, there beside the
big guns.
" ( Where are your officers? ' cried the King.
A STORY OF KING ALBERT 151
' Sire, they have gone to an inn — to — to drink
champagne/ says my brother.
"'What?' thundered the King. 'They have gone
where ? '
" ' To an inn, Your Majesty/ says my brother again.
" ' Leaving the forts in charge of a sergeant ? '
" ' Yes, Your Majesty/
" ' Send for them at once/ cried the King, and his
eyes glittered.
" After a quarter of an hour they came, very shame-
faced, riding on their fine horses. From the pocket of
one of them there stuck out a champagne bottle !
"The officers saluted the King, much frightened.
' Get down off your horses/ he ordered.
" They climbed down awkwardly, with legs of wood.
" ' You are under arrest/ said the King. He thrust
out his hand suddenly and pulled the wine bottle from
the pocket of him who had it. ' For this you betray a
kingdom — for wine and an hour at the inn/ he said.
' Give me your swords/
" They gave them up.
" Then the King took the swords and snapped them in
two across his knee before the faces of the officers and
men. And the King wept."
CHAPTER IV
BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
ANTWERP AGAIN
ON a cold, clammy afternoon in late November, three
young Americans stood in the Pass Bureau at Antwerp,
chatting with Lieutenant Sperling, aide to Baron von
Hiihne, the German Governor of the fortress and prov-
ince of Antwerp. The bureau was a rambling suite of
offices in the old Belgian Ministry of Colonies on the
Marche aux Souliers. The floor was bare planks. The
furniture was cheap oak, scarred and dented. Outside,
under the wide windows, stood rows of military auto-
mobiles, their gray hoods marked " General Government,
Fortress Antwerp," and sentries scuffed to and fro in the
paved courtyard. The street before the bureau was
clear of pedestrians, for the Germans did not permit
Belgians to walk past headquarters, unless on official
business. Next door, in the Hotel Saint Antoine, where
British and Belgian officers had lodged during the siege,
and where German officers now lived, a shell had punched
a neat round hole near the roof facing the Place Verte,
and across the street, in the Marche aux Souliers, stood
the gutted hulks of a score of shops, burned during the
152
ANTWERP AGAIN 153
bombardment. The ruins were partially hidden by a neat
wooden fence which served as bulletin-board for the
Antwerp Animal Rescue League, the Belgian Red Cross,
and the German General Government.
An official proclamation, still posted, although Ant-
werp had fallen a month and a half before, read :
The German Army enters your city as a victor. No harm
will be done to any citizen, and your property will be spared
if you avoid any hostile action. Any insubordination will
be punished by court-martial, and may result in the destruc-
tion of your beautiful city.
In the offices of the Pass Bureau, a lithograph of
Kaiser Wilhelm Second and two cheap picture postcards
showing German soldiers off for the front were pasted
on the walls, and perched above a bookcase stood a
plaster bust of Leopold First, Belgium's first king. Four
or five soldiers sat about at little tables laboriously writ-
ing out passes in longhand, or interrogating sad-eyed
Belgians who filed in one by one from the long, black,
silent queue waiting outside in the cold. While we
watched, the bureau closed for the night.
" Geschlossen! " muttered an under-officer, rising
from his chair.
"If you please, monsieur " began one of the Bel-
gians.
" No ! It's shut ! Out ! " he exclaimed. And a soldier
hustled the applicant to the door.
154 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
" Please, Herr Lieutenant."
Sperling wheeled and faced an orderly standing stiffly
at attention.
" The passes are for ? "
" Lieutenant Herbster, U. S. N., Mr. G. Evans Hub-
bard, and Mr. Edward Eyre Hunt," he answered in Ger-
man.
" Danke sehr. The gentlemen are from ?"
" Hague, Holland."
"Citizens of ?"
"The United States of America. All the gentlemen
are Americans."
"To go from Antwerp to Brussels and return?"
" Antwerp to Brussels."
" For civil or military automobile, Herr Lieutenant ? "
" Military automobile, of course. The gentlemen are
'Americans."
The Lieutenant turned again to us and continued : " It
is fine, eh? Everything for me is paid. I have a suite
of three rooms in the Hotel Saint Antoine, where His
Excellency the Governor and the others of the staff live.
I have a bedroom, a drawing-room, a bath, worth
twenty-seven marks in Berlin. My breakfast, that is two
marks ; a cigar, one mark ; lunch, six marks ; benedictine,
two marks; another cigar, one mark; coffee, one mark;
dinner, seven marks; liqueur, three marks; cigars and
coffee, two marks. Then I have my chauffeur and my
valet. All free. I pay nothing. Fine, eh? Altogether
ANTWERP AGAIN 155
I have seventy or eighty marks' worth every day
here."
" That sounds like an easy way of getting a living.
Don't you pay the Belgians for anything? "
" No," he said. " If one is a German officer, one goes
into any restaurant, any hotel in Antwerp, and one signs
one's name for the things one eats. Like a club in
America, eh ? It is by the menu de requisition. How do
you say that in English ? "
" Requisition bill-of-fare."
:< Yes. And the city pays all. The restaurant keeper
sends the bill to the city. Fine, eh? And we Germans
eat and drink very much ! Everything is requisitioned."
" Do they pay even for champagne suppers? "
"Please?"
" Does the city pay your wine bills ? "
" Certainly."
"Don't the people object?"
The Lieutenant drew himself up proudly. " They are
Belgians; we are Germans. They make no objections.
. . . Ah, here are your Scheins"
A soldier clicked his heels and presented three sheets
of green paper, duly filled out in longhand and stamped
" Kommandantur von Antwerpen."
"Thanks, Lieutenant. Thanks especially for arrang-
ing it so we can go to Brussels by auto. The English
newspapers say you haven't many automobiles and no
benzine. We appreciate your kindness."
156 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
lie smiled broadly. " So? You can see we have
many automobiles in Antwerp, and we have benzol in-
stead of benzine. We have potatoes for alcohol; we
have coal; so we have plenty of benzol, eh? ... A mo-
ment," he added. " Perhaps I go to Brussels tomorrow
morning. Then I take you. I will show you the ruins.
Very interesting. Very nice ruins."
" Oh, thanks awfully."
" Eight o'clock, then, we start. I will show you the
ruins."
We three Americans bowed ceremoniously and walked
out. On the steps below the sign lettered "Pass-Zen-
trale, Antwerpen" and " Intendantur " a sentry drew
aside and stood a salute. Herbster, U. S. N., smiled
happily at the compliment. " The ' Deutschers ' aren't
so awful, are they? " he asked. ..." Now let's go look
at what the Zeppelins did to Antwerp ! "
THE CONQUERORS
At eight o'clock in the morning, German time, Lieu-
tenant Sperling's gray Mercedes car stood puffing outside
our hotel. We climbed hastily into the tonneau and
buried ourselves to the chin under fur rugs and lap robes.
It was mercilessly cold and black as ink. A drizzle of
icy rain fell, and the streets were dark and dead as a
buried city. The Lieutenant flashed a pocket lamp over
the car and its occupants. By the flashlight we saw two
THE CONQUERORS 157
rifles standing stiff and forbidding beside the military
chauffeur, and in the bottom of the car, two packets of
official mail destined for the Governor-General in
Brussels.
"Right?" asked Lieutenant Sperling, slipping into a
balloon silk raincoat and preparing to drive the automo-
bile himself.
" Right/' we answered, our teeth chattering.
' You remember the musical-comedy, * Pink Lady '? "
he asked. " I have seen her in New York." And as
we slid from before the lighted hotel into the dark, dead
tunnel-like streets of Antwerp, he began lustily to sing:
" To you, beeyoutifool ladie, I raise my eyes ;
My heart, beeyoutifool ladie, to your heart sighs." . . .
A red lantern, waving in crazy arcs, stopped us at the
city gates. " Halt! halt! wohinf " bellowed rough voices
from the gloom. " General Government ! " the chauffeur
answered. " Good ! " came the response, and we dashed
on down the road. This happened seven times in an
hour's ride, except that the lantern gave place to a red
flag as morning advanced.
Darkness and a misty rain still hid everything. We
could scarcely see each other's faces. There was no sun-
rise on that cold November morning. It seemed instead
as if the rain slowly became luminous as light fought its
way from the east. The landscape lay blurred and
158 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
drenched — a vista of burned villages and muddy roads.
It was a country seen through tears.
Lieutenant Sperling's pleasant chatter roused us at
intervals. "You see that?" he asked, p9inting with
pride to a hillock near the road. I fancied I saw the
pin of an old windmill and a clutter of ruins. "A Zep-
pelin did that," he went on. " It was a practice shot."
We raced along beside heaps of bricks and ashes
which had once been picturesque Flemish villages. The
whitewashed walls were shrapnel-pitted, so that the
bricks showed through red, like blood. In frozen, muddy
fields along our route, bent old peasants worked on
turnip mounds. Cabbages lay heels up in hillocks which
looked as if they must have served some military pur-
pose. There were trenches in almost every line of brush
or trees along the Antwerp-Brussels highway: careless,
grubby trenches built by the Belgians, mathematical,
business-like, criss-cross trenches built by the invaders.
There were quick burrows which a man could throw up
in a quarter of an hour with his kit shovel, pits with
sharpened stakes in them to break up cavalry charges,
and brambly barbed-wire entanglements which looked as
if they had been woven by a crazy spider, and which
were frosted and dripping like a spider web on a win-
ter's morning.
The rain changed to a drizzle, and we could see much
better, but our depression grew. I was fated to travel
that Antwerp-Brussels highway for a year, but always
THE CONQUERORS 159
with the same feeling of sadness which I felt on first
seeing it. Innumerable trees were scarred by shells.
Huge holes, half full of mud and ice, were gouged in
roads and fields. Farm-house after farm-house had been
burned or else destroyed by shell-fire. And once we
noticed a broken cradle beside what had been a doorway
in the murdered village of Waelhem.
" Good shooting," remarked Lieutenant Sperling.
" Our artillery, I think it is the best in the world, eh? "
At the bitterly contested crossing of the river Nethe,
where the Belgians fought to hold the enemy from the
advance on Antwerp, where they flooded the country,
blew up all the bridges, and charged again and again in
the face of overwhelming artillery fire, there stood a lit-
tle earthen mound and a big black cross. The inscrip-
tion was in German script, lettered white on black. I
caught only a part of it while the sentries examined our
passes. " Thirty-eight brave soldiers who died for the
Fatherland," it read. I do not know if the dead were
Belgians or Germans. The conquerors write the same
words over fallen foes as over friends.
Beside the bridge stood a Belgian with a collection
box, begging contributions for the poor of Wael-
hem.
The embankments and gun-cupolas of Fort Waelhem,
first of the Antwerp forts to fall, were plowed up as if
by a gigantic steam-shovel. " Forty-two centimeter
shells," explained the Lieutenant. The fort was a gravel
i6o BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
bank. And all along the road were graves. Men had
been buried as they fell ; sometimes singly, sometimes in
groups. Each grave was marked with a new lath cross.
Some of the crosses bore bunches of artificial flowers or
wreaths, or simple crowns of tissue paper, dripping with
wet. Some of them held a German Pickelhaube, or else
a shapeless, flat service-cap.
&
But the village of Waelhem was most pitiful. It was
a living grave. Of its two thousand inhabitants, twelve
hundred had already returned. Not a house in the vil-
lage had been spared, yet the refugees came back to their
hearthsides, and were living in huts constructed against
the empty brick walls, with curtains of bed-clothing to
keep out the beating rain.
And romantic, unworldly Malines was a city of gray
ghosts. The gray rain fell incessantly, but we could see
the south side of the famous cathedral of Saint Rombaut,
a mass of repulsive wreckage, in which the big stained-
glass windows hung shattered and inert, and the gigantic
tower — the " eighth wonder of the world," according to
Vauban — punctured with shrapnel, where the dead bells
of the carillon still hung. German soldiers lounged be-
fore the dilapidated old Cloth Hall. Our automobile
passed through a Red Sea of debris piled higher than the
tonneau on either side of the market-place. Walls were
sheered away like theater-sets, showing flowered wall-
papers and battered furniture, and floors cascading craz-
ily down to the street. Three hundred and fifteen houses
THE CONQUERORS 161
had been totally destroyed and fifteen hundred damaged,
for Malines was bombarded four times.
Near Eppeghem a white swan paddled serenely in an
ornamental pond. On the borders of the pond were
crosses marking graves, and willows burned and slashed
by shells.
A few farm-houses, made habitable again, bore the
magic words " chocolate " and " milk " chalked up on
doors, so the returning refugees might buy.
It was with vast relief that we reached Brussels, where
there had been no fighting and no destruction, where
beauty was unmarred by the ruin of war, even if be-
draggled and ashamed.
A stiff line of German Boy Scouts stood before the
beautiful hotels on the Pare, where Governor-General
von der Goltz had his offices. They looked pathetically
tired and lonely so far from home, but kept eyes front
and shoulders back like maturer servants of the Kaiser.
Lieutenant Sperling smiled as we drew up before them,
but he returned their salute gravely. "Jung Deutsch-
land! Young Germany," he whispered to us. ...
" And now for the Hotel Astoria, on the rue Royale,
eh ? " he said. " You will be the only foreigners in the
hotel. It is for Germans. Requisitioned." As we drew
up at the curb, he was still singing lustily:
" To you, beeyoutifool ladie, I raise my eyes ;
My heart, beeyoutifool ladie, to your heart sighs;
162 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
Come, come, beeyoutifool ladie, to Paradise.
Dream, dream, dream, and forget
Care, pain, useless regret,
Love, love, beeyoutifool ladie, in my heart sings."
HUMOROUS HERR BAEDEKER
Several times after that we had occasion to use our
military passes and to ride in German automobiles. The
officers always seemed glad to have us, and they seemed
to us amazingly boyish and care-free. What they
wanted, they took. They even requisitioned women's
underwear from lockers in the Brussels Golf Club,
and of course wine was always fair spoils, whether
paid for by the Intendantur or not. Almost every one
of them had an automobile at his disposal, and they
appeared everywhere, riding freely about the country
in spite of the fabled shortage of gasolene and tires.
The peasants, whether on foot or in their little dog-
and donkey-carts, were desperately afraid of the " joy-
riders." The screech of a Klaxon, or the shrill, frivo-
lous yodel of an automobile fife, such as many of
the German motorists affected, would clear the narrow
Flemish roads quick as light. But that was not always
enough to satisfy the officers. They howled picturesque
German curses at the ignorant peasant drivers, apparently
for the fun of the thing, and then whizzed off down the
road, giving horn with all the delight of a coaching party
in a Dickens novel.
Among themselves they were a good-natured, senti-
HUMOROUS IIERR BAEDEKER 163
mental lot of warriors, in spick and span uniforms and
well greased boots. Most of them were typical, square-
headed, smooth-shaven, slash-cheeked giants, who seemed
to be playing at a game called war. Many times they
carried with them in the automobile, gifts for the sen-
tries along the route: cakes of chocolate, cigars, or
copies of the Kolnische Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt,
Kreuz Zeitung, Die Woche, and Frankfurter Zeitung.
Sometimes the sentries stopped us; more often they did
not ; but on one occasion when a conscientious sentry did
his full duty and compelled every one in the car, officers
included, to show passes, a major told me the classic
story of Kaiser Wilhelm Second at the Prussian manceu-
vers, attempting to dash past a sentry. The sentry
promptly presented his rifle and compelled the imperial
automobile to halt.
" Do you know me ? " demanded the Kaiser angrily,
removing his automobile goggles and glaring at the sol-
dier.
" Ja, Majestat" answered the sentry, "but I have
orders to stop everybody."
" Umph ! " snorted the Kaiser. Then his stern face
melted into a smile. " You are right, my son," he said,
and he saluted the soldier and ordered the car to go
back by the way it had come. . . .
I have seen the sentries give money or other little gifts
to Flemish children. Frequently the men on sentry duty
1 64 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
were old Landsturm soldiers who had children of their
own in the Fatherland, and with characteristic German
sentiment felt deeply their privation. On the whole the
sentries were simple, ignorant men, anxious to please,
and mystified by the elaborate orders they had to exe-
cute. Usually they were much astonished to learn my
nationality. Once when a sentry had carefully studied
my passport, he said in a pleasant tone of astonishment :
" Ah, so you are an American ! "
" Yes," I answered. Then, thinking the man had been
in America, I asked if he had traveled much.
" Ach, nein" he said emphatically, " Belgium is quite
far enough from home ! "
Brussels, the proud Paris of the north, clung desper-
ately to her self-respect and tried to ignore the Germans.
Shutters were up on many of the fashionable shops.
The best hotels were full of officers who lived by requisi-
tion. General von Luttwitz, military governor of Brus-
sels, inhabited a beautiful palace on the rue de la Loi, —
a magnificent residence with priceless carpets and enor-
mous cloisonne vases on the grand staircase. Such
places were hives of soldiers; orderlies rushed to and
fro carrying rabbits and pheasants for the general's
table, and a persistent smell of soup swam through
the mansion. The Germans stinted themselves for
nothing.
Beggars wandered about the streets. Women holding
HUMOROUS HERR BAEDEKER 165
young babies in their arms stood on all the curbs, beg-
ging openly, or selling matches and shoestrings. On the
street cars, where soldiers rode free, citizens proudly
turned their backs, or refused to sit beside the hated uni-
forms, and in the crowded cafes they frequently left the
place entirely rather than sip beer or coffee beside the
enemy.
It was hard for Belgian pride. There were no flags
but German flags; there was very little currency, except
German marks and pfennigs, for the people hoarded their
Belgian National Bank notes, and silver and copper had
ceased to circulate; there was no opera; there were no
theaters; there were only a few moving-picture shows,
where John Bunny and Lillian Walker smiled on Bel-
gians and Germans alike from the flickering films. The
Royal Palace was a Red Cross hospital. On the heights
beside the Palais de Justice — the Acropolis of Brussels
— German cannon frowned down upon the city. The
Grand' Place echoed to soldiers' steps, and the rue de la
Loi, beside the Pare, was closed to all but Germans. The
splendors of Brussels dripped ooze, her park walks were
churned up by the hooves of German war-horses, and
even the alleys " reserved for children's games " were
appropriated for the drilling of raw cavalrymen. Thou-
sands of Belgians every day besieged the Pass Bureau
for permits to travel. The soup kitchens and bread lines
were thronged. There was no work to do. The rust of
idleness was on everything. An occasional aeroplane
166 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
from the Allies dropped little celluloid tubes containing
encouraging news, but the Germans, waging a success-
ful war, insolently published all the news, even the offi-
cial reports of the Allies.
Above the prostrate Belgians, like another race or
another caste, roared and flashed the brilliant, careless,
militaristic Teutons, their lives hedged about with glory
and sudden death.
When an officer went to the front, his fellows gave
him a huge dinner. They drank much, occasionally they
wept a little, but he whose duty it was to go always made
the occasion one for congratulations and conviviality.
Then in his spickest and spannest new gray-green uni-
form, with the black-and-white ribbon of the Iron Cross
in his buttonhole, he climbed into a waiting automobile
and shot noisily down the dark streets on his way to the
lines.
For a week the King of Saxony had the rooms directly
below our suite in the Hotel Astoria. Governor-General
Kolmar von der Goltz ("Goltz Pasha") was a caller
at our hotel. I saw him the day he left Belgium for
Turkey. He was a big, heavy man, with keen, humorous
eyes behind his thick glasses; his left breast smothered
in decorations. There was some sort of wen on his left
cheek, and he wore two strips of black court-plaster set
at right angles across it, looking ludicrously like the
Iron Cross. . . . One day there was unusual stir among
HUMOROUS HERR BAEDEKER 167
the officers. " Be here at ten o'clock tomorrow morn-
ing," they said, "and you will see the Kaiser." But I
had business elsewhere, and so missed the golden oppor-
tunity to look on the War Lord.
Late one night, Lieutenant Herbster and I were invited
to meet some of the officers. It was nearly midnight.
The group about the long table in the Hotel Astoria
had been drinking, so that our intrusion produced a
marked effect. There was much bowing and scraping,
clicking of heels, and commenting, the nature of which
I did not altogether understand. But I found myself
seated at the table, face to face with the aide to a
colonel high in command in Brussels, and found to my
astonishment that I had known the man as a student in
Harvard University.
The colonel — a hard, thin old Prussian, who was
partly drunk and genuinely offensive — gave me a taste
of what some of the Germans thought of American re-
lief for Belgium. " You Americans are a nation of
sentimental fools," he snorted. " You want to feed
these franc-tireurs, these barbarians of Belgians. If you
did the right thing, you would give the German army the
food that you are bringing over for these wretches." . . .
Directly across the table was an officer named
Coumbus, a fine-looking man of perhaps thirty-five, who
had resided for years in England, and was an officer of
cavalry. His perfect English and agreeable manners at-
tracted Lieutenant Herbster and me, and after the other
1 68 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
officers had withdrawn, the three of us still sat and
talked.
"There are a lot of wounded Africans in a hospital
here in Brussels/' he informed us. " And in one ward
the doctor has been clever enough to put a Scotchman
along with the niggers. I go up every day to visit him.
Do you know, it pleases me to see that Johnnie lying
there with his face to the wall, trying to keep out the
smell of the blacks. . . . Damn these inferior races !
"The Belgians are the poorest of the lot, though.
They do not understand war, and they do not understand
the rules of war. I remember once riding into a little
town down here in the south of Belgium and finding my
four scouts lying dead in the streets. Civilians had
butchered horses and men — shot them from behind. I
ordered my men to go into the houses and kill every one
they found. Then I ordered them to burn the town."
He leaned over the table and concluded quietly, " There
once was a nice little town in that place. There is no
such town now." . . .
There was a cat-and-mouse air about the occupation.
The army seemed to play with the country, and thor-
oughly to enjoy itself. But with this went also the
traditional German enthusiasm for sight-seeing in order
to improve the mind. Some of the officers and most of
the men were in Belgium for the first time. They felt it
was an opportunity not to be lost, and I often saw them
GERMAN GOVERNMENT 169
with little red-bound Baedekers in their pockets, " do-
ing " the Belgian cities with the thoroughness of holiday
tourists.
Herr Baedeker is singularly felicitous in some
of his Belgian notes, if read in connection with the
war. " Dixmude," he remarks blandly, " is a quiet little
town on the Yser ! " " Nieuport is a small and quiet
place on the Yser, noted for its obstinate resistance to
the French in 1489 and for the ' Battle of the Dunes ' in
July, 1600, in which the Dutch defeated the Spaniards
under Archduke Albert." Of Termonde he says,
"Louis XIV besieged this place in 1667, but was com-
pelled to retreat, as the besieged, by opening the sluices,
laid the whole district under water." Blankenberghe is
"a small fishing town with 6,100 inhabitants, visited by
45,000 persons annually, half of whom are Germans ! "
And of unhappy Ypres the learned author observes,
" The siege of the town and burning of the suburbs by
the English and the burghers of Ghent in 1383 caused
the last of the weavers to migrate ! "
GERMAN GOVERNMENT
But the Germans were working as well as playing.
Their organizing power was amazing. To choose an ex-
pert, to put him in charge of a department, to give him
a clerk or two, and then to leave him alone, seemed all
there is to the modern miracle of German administra-
tion.
i;o BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
Belgium was not treated as an administrative unit. Gov-
ernor-General von der Goltz, and later Governor-General
von Bissing, controlled only about two-thirds of the ter-
ritory actually occupied by the German armies. Ant-
werp, Brussels, Liege, Namur, Dinant, Mons, — all these
fell to his share. But Ghent was in a second division,
governed by a general of the Etapp * en-Inspection.
Bruges constituted still another division, controlled by an
admiral of the Imperial navy, where sailors from the
fleets in Hamburg, Kiel, and Wilhelmshaven, their rib-
bons tucked up under their sailor caps and in landsman's
uniforms, fought as infantry. And along the fighting
lines in Belgium and northern France, each army
corps was a separate unit of government, responsible
only to the General Staff Headquarters at Charleville, or
to the Emperor personally.
" But in Belgium it is like the old religious and secu-
lar governments in the Middle Ages/' they explained.
" We have always a civil and a military arm to our gov-
ernment. In each Belgian province the government is
dual. In each military county (Kreis) or Belgian ar-
rondissement, we have Kreischef and commandant.
You have seen it? Even the villages are garrisoned and
governed. We do not interfere with the Belgian local
self-government or the local courts; but we have our
dual government to oversee them. We have soldiers
everywhere."
"And spies?"
GERMAN GOVERNMENT 171
" Spies, too. The Belgians must be quiet. His Ex-
cellency the Governor has promised the armies that Bel-
gium will be kept quiet. That is most important."
" Do you expect outbreaks ? "
" We expect — everything and nothing. We anticipate
everything. That is the German way. . . . The Bel-
gians will be kept quiet."
The new Governor-General, Baron von Bissing, took
office immediately after " Goltz Pasha " left for Turkey.
His position carried with it the dignity and authority of
royalty. His proclamations were written in the first per-
son : " I command. ... I ordain. ... I decree." They
say that in his youth Governor-General von Bissing was
a chum of the Kaiser's and that the Kaiser used to pay
the bills at a time when his friend's personal fortune
was too small to permit even of the ordinary expendi-
tures of a dashing young army officer. If that is true
General von Bissing has advanced a long way since then.
He lives in a Belgian palace, he rules a nation, and he
stands on a par, under the War Lord, with the petty
monarchs of some of the oldest German states.
Many officers in the Civil Government were Germans
who had lived for years in Belgium and had been on
excellent terms with the Belgian Government and peo-
ple. Others had made special studies of Belgian condi-
tions. The German Civil Governor in Brussels, Excel-
lenz von Sandt, was formerly president of the Local
172 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
Government Board at Aix-la-Chapelle ; the head of the
Department of Engineering and Public Works, Coun-
cilor of Justice Trimborn of Cologne and member of the
Reichstag, was formerly German Consul-General in
Brussels; the head of the Brussels Pass Bureau, Lieu-
tenant Behrens, was, until the day war broke out, head
of a pool of shipping companies in Antwerp and had
resided there for years. The Belgains doubtless were
right in believing that their conquerors knew where every
stick of furniture, every horse and cow, every cart and
automobile, every man, every gun, and every franc in
Belgium was to be found. . . .
I called one day at the offices of the Civil Govern-
ment in Brussels, called in German Zivilverwaltung , to
learn something of Belgian agricultural conditions in
normal years. Herr Doktor Frost was introduced to me
— a thin, studious young man in lieutenant's uniform, to
whom I explained my wants. " How much wheat, how
much rye, how much oats, how much barley does Bel-
gium produce in average years ? " I asked.
Lieutenant Frost smiled and leaned across his study-
desk, pointing to a bulky blue-bound book lying before
him. " Look in the book," he said, smiling as if at a
joke. " Page 367; paragraph two. You find it? Yes? "
I pored over the concise academic tables with their
crisp footnotes in German script. Every bit of informa-
tion I wanted regarding the crops of Belgium stood on
that page. Then I closed the book and scanned the
GERMAN GOVERNMENT 173
cover. " The Agricultural Resources of Belgium," it
read; "by Doctor Walther Frost, Munich, 1913." . . .
The retreat of the Belgian armies and government had
removed every trace of national organization. King,
Cabinet, and Parliament were lost at a stroke. The
Royal Provincial Governors were deprived of their seats,
and the nine provinces and their constituent communes
were isolated and prostrate.
The only nucleus of a governmental connection be-
tween the invaders and the Belgian people was the Bel-
gian Permanent Deputation — a sort of executive com-
mittee of the Provincial Councils, which exists whether
the councils are sitting or adjourned. Its powers are not
important. The Royal Provincial Governor is its presi-
dent. Now, by military decree, the German Civil Gov-
ernors assumed the presidency of the nine Permanent
Deputations, and the structure of civil government was
re-erected. The communal authorities were, for the
most part, left in possession of their normal powers and
responsibilities, subject always to the military. The Bel-
gian courts were not greatly disturbed, although their
decisions were subject to military review. Belgian agents
de police, in uniform, but deprived of their short cut-
lasses, kept order in the communes ; Belgians manned the
fire-departments and kept the prisons; Belgian customs
officers served at the frontiers, although their services
were largely perfunctory; Belgian employees managed
174 BELGIUM AS A GERMAN PROVINCE
the street- and light railways, although the regular
state railways were entirely in the hands of the mili-
tary and no Belgian could go near them ; Belgian gardes
champetres continued to serve as rural police; Belgian
burgomasters and aldermen went through the motions,
at least, of local self-government; and the Belgian relief
work, whether feeding and clothing the destitute, or giv-
ing money to the needy, remained entirely outside the
German sphere of influence, in the hands of the Belgians
and the \merican nembers of the Commission for Re-
lief in Belgium. The sole exception was the Belgian
Red Cross which was taken over bodily by the German
authorities and placed under the control of a German
administration with Prince Hatzfeldt at its head.
Two things the Germans wanted of the Belgians —
quiet and cash. These two things they got.1
* See Appendix II, page 331-
CHAPTER V
STARVING BELGIUM
THE CATASTROPHE
FEW know in detail the situation in which Belgium
found herself in the autumn of 1914. The invasion by
the German armies overwhelmed the country almost as
completely as an avalanche overwhelms a village lying in
its path. The superstructure of civilized society was
swept away.
Belgium had been the most highly industrialized coun-
try in the world. It imported seventy-eight per cent of
its breadstuffs. Its own agricultural products afforded
sustenance to the population for only four months out
of the year. For the other eight months the country
was dependent upon imported foods; much of them
quickly perishable. A peaceable interruption of overseas
or overland commerce would have brought the whole
country into immediate sight of starvation, even without
the horrors of invasion.
For weeks following the outbreak of war trans-
atlantic traffic was virtually suspended. American food-
stuffs remained in American warehouses while European
consumers were in growing need of them. The ship in
175
1 76 STARVING BELGIUM
which I sailed for Europe on August twenty-fourth
carried a large cargo of flour, for the distress in neutral
Holland was acute even in the first month of the war.
Belgium was suffering as much as or more than Hol-
land ; but in addition to this the land was overrun by the
Germans, and an acute crisis was transformed into an
overwhelming disaster.
Forty-nine per cent of the population were salary and
wage earners. Almost half the population, then, was
dependent on the normal functioning of industry.
Credit, which is the basis of modern industrial activity
and the rock-bottom basis of Belgium's national exist-
ence, was shattered by the shock of the German armies.
Within ten weeks from the fourth of August almost the
entire country was in the possession of the enemy. With
credit destroyed, production came to an instant stand-
still. Mines and workshops, factories and mills closed,
and panic seized the land. The whole of the working
population was plunged into the deepest misery.
The harvest was being gathered as war broke on the
country and the ripe crops were left standing in the
fields where they were trampled by the armies or left to
rot. Belgium on July thirty-first was a land of intense
activity. A week later it was a land of the unemployed.
July thirty-first found 1,757,489 men, women, and chil-
dren occupied in upwards of seven hundred industries.
1,204,810 people were tilling the land. August seventh
found practically every man, woman, and child on farms,
THE CATASTROPHE 177
in fields, on canals, on railroads, in every village, town,
and city, suddenly idle, without work, and without food.
Preceding the westward march of the invaders came
a wave of refugees. Uprooted from the soil, flung from
villages and cities invaded, often burned and pillaged,
they fled westward, carrying with them panic and blind
terror. While Belgium's heroic army by its stand at
Liege and Namur may have saved Paris and Calais, it
could not save its own country. As the Germans ad-
vanced they seized every line of communication, — the
railroads, street-cars, canals, telegraphs, telephones, and
mails. The copper nerves and iron veins which are the
life of every modern nation were wrenched from the
Belgians. Every village was cut off from its neighbor;
every town from the next town. There was no means
of transport, except for German troops, so that every
commune, from the tiniest village to the greatest city,
was suddenly isolated, ignorant of what was happening
a few miles off, and unable to ascertain the most vital
news, except through a few hasty words that might fall
from the shaking lips of fugitives.
Belgium was singular among industrial nations in hav-
ing a great mass of floating labor. The policy of the
Government-owned railway system had been to make
transportation for the working classes as reasonable as
possible, so that it was the cheapest system of transport
in the world. At the same time a system of peasant
proprietorship in land had been fostered for many years
178 STARVING BELGIUM
by the Government, but under it the peasant could barely
sustain life. The man of the family often migrated from
place to place during the summer months, working in the
mines, in the farms and vineyards of France, while his
wife and children cultivated his tiny holding. By strict
economy he was able to make both ends meet, although,
even so, tens of thousands of workers found it neces-
sary during the winter months to make lace; Belgium's
great lace-making industry being largely parasitic.
J. DeC. MacDonnel has fitly described the state of
these workers.1 " There are no villages, broadly speak-
ing, that are purely agricultural. Men who labor in the
towns continue to reside in the most distant part of the
country, rising in the first hours after midnight to tramp
miles along dark roads to a railroad station, and travel
thence almost incredible distances, day after day, by
train to their work. These are the workmen whom
astonished tourists see sleeping in doorways and by
roadsides in the streets and suburbs of Antwerp, Brus-
sels, Ghent, or any of the Belgian cities during the mid-
day hour of rest, and snoring in the evening, their weary
bodies piled on top of each other, on the benches and
floors of the waiting-rooms of railway stations and in
the third class railway carriages."
Under such conditions, transport facilities, and the
*J. DeC. MacDonnel's Belgium, Her Kings, Kingdom, and
People, published by Little, Brown & Co., is an interesting though
biased account of conditions before the war. The author is some-
times a better churchman than historian.
THE CATASTROPHE 179
railways in particular, were essential to the people ; and
these were the first of Belgium's necessities upon which
the Germans seized. Many of the canals were blocked
by the retreating army ; barges were sunk, bridges blown
up, and dykes cut ; and as it was by means of the canals
that the bulk of the foodstuffs normally was distributed
over the country, the food-supply was automatically cut
off.
As the Germans occupied town after town, province
after province, they quartered soldiers upon the Belgians,
and these hastened the consumption of what little food
was available. General von Emmich's proclamation to
the Belgians before Liege ran :
I gave formal guarantee to the Belgian population that it
will not have to suffer the horrors of war ; that we shall pay
in money for the food we must take from the country ; that
our soldiers will show themselves to be the best friends of
a people for whom we entertain the highest esteem, the
greatest sympathy.
But the patriotic resistance of the Belgians changed
all this. General von Beseler's despatch to the Kaiser
following the fall of Antwerp is typical of the psy-
chology of the soldier, and has a curiously medieval
ring:
The war booty taken at Antwerp is enormous: at least
500 cannon and huge quantities of ammunition, sanitation
materials, numerous high-power motor-cars, locomotives,
i8o STARVING BELGIUM
wagons, 4,000,000 kilograms of wheat, large quantities
of flour, coal, and flax wool, the value of which is estimated
at 10,000,000 marks; copper, silver, one armored-train,
several hospital trains, and quantities of fish.
There are few of the raw materials of industry which
cannot be put to some military use. A great part of the
machinery of peace-time can be converted into machinery
with which to manufacture implements of war. Above
all soldiers need food and consume it in immense quan-
tities. Finding all these things at hand in Belgium the
Germans proceeded to commandeer them right and left.
Linseed oil, oil-cakes, nitrates, animal and vegetable oils
of all sorts, petroleum and mineral oils, wool, copper,
rubber, ivory, cocoa, rice, wine, beer — anything and
everything that men could consume or that the German
factories could utilize — were seized and transported to
the Fatherland. In many cases the goods were con-
fiscated; in others they were requisitioned by the con-
querors, a price was decided upon, and payment prom-
ised at some convenient time in the future.
Belgium was gutted.
THE CRY FOR HELP
From the isolated communes came frantic appeals for
help. The Belgians appealed first to the Germans, who
in some cases divided their army rations with the people,
although this was unsystematic and utterly useless when
seven millions were concerned. They appealed to their
THE CRY FOR HELP 181
neighbor Holland, but the Dutch were eating war bread
and anxiously hoarding every bit of foodstuff, for they
were as yet unable to import enough for their own uses.
They appealed to Brussels, sending purchasing agents
with dog-carts to buy a little flour and potatoes in the
open market; for Brussels was officially the capital, and
they were accustomed to turn to Brussels.
But Brussels, like themselves, was isolated and face
to face with famine. The sole advantage it possessed
over the other communes was a volunteer relief organi-
zation, called the Central Relief Committee (le Comite
Central de Seeours et d' Alimentation pour I' Agglomera-
tion bruxelloise) , formed on September fifth under the
patronage of the American and Spanish Ministers, Mr.
Brand Whitlock and the Marquis of Villalobar.
In every little village there was a Bureau de Bien-
faisance; often there was a Society of Saint Vincent de
Paul and a Comite de Seeours. In the larger cities there
were sturdy branches of the Red Cross, with committees
of charity, cheap restaurants, committees to take charge
of the children of soldiers, to provide proper diet for
nursing mothers, and a variety of other relief organiza-
tions, secular and religious, such as the Little Sisters of
the Poor, mainly under the auspices of the Roman
Catholic Church.
But though the local machinery was at hand there
were first four general problems to face : the re-establish-
ment of order and credit abroad; the right to transport
1 82 STARVING BELGIUM
foodstuffs through the British blockade into territory in
the hands of the Germans ; the right to use the transport
facilities of Belgium in the distribution of such imports;
and the securing of a guarantee that the Germans would
requisition for themselves nothing thus imported for the
Belgian population.
The Central Relief Committee, which had been formed
to care for the wants of Brussels, appealed through its
American and Spanish Minister-patrons to Governor-
General Kolmar von der Goltz to guarantee the safety
of any supplies which might be purchased or donated
abroad for the benefit of the Belgian civil population.
On October sixteenth the Governor-General gave formal
assurance that " foodstuffs of all sorts imported by the
Committee to assist the civil population shall be reserved
exclusively for the nourishment of the civil population
of Belgium, and that consequently these foodstuffs shall
be exempt from requisition on the part of the military
authorities and shall rest exclusively at the disposition
of the Committee."
Meanwhile Mr. Whitlock had appealed officially to the
United States Government. In the London Times for
Wednesday, October fourteenth, 1914, is the following
telegram :
NEW YORK, October 13. — The Administration cannot
permit Mr. Page to have food supplies for the starving
population of Brussels shipped in his name to Mr. Whit-
lock until the German Government sanctions this step. Mr.
THE CRY FOR HELP 183
Page's urgent representations concerning the immediate
necessity of relieving the wants of Brussels were communi-
cated to Germany last Wednesday, but no reply has yet
been received."
Armed with the assurance given by Governor-General
von der Goltz that nothing imported by the committee
would be requisitioned by the Germans, Emile Francqui
and Baron Lambert of the Central Relief Committee,
and Hugh Gibson, secretary of the American Lega-
tion, went to London to explain to the British Gov-
ernment the desperate situation of the city of Brussels
and to request permission to import food. At the same
time they appealed personally to American Ambassador
Walter Hines Page and were by him referred to an
American mining engineer named Herbert Clark Hoover
who had just rendered notable services to the Embassy
and to his fellow-countrymen by heading a committee to
advance funds to send home to America those of our na-
tionals who had been caught in Europe at the outbreak
of war. As a result of conferences between Mr. Hoover
and Mr. Francqui a plan was drawn up and submitted
to the British Government, which granted permission to
Mr. Hoover and to an American Committee which he
should organize under the patronage of the Ministers of
the United States and of Spain in London, Berlin, The
Hague, and Brussels, the right to purchase and transport
through the British blockade to Rotterdam, Holland,
cargoes of foodstuffs, destined to be trans-shipped 'into
1 84 STARVING BELGIUM
Belgium, consigned to the American Minister in Brus-
sels, and to be distributed through the Central Relief
Committee — now expanded to the Belgian National Re-
lief Committee (le Comite National de Secours et d' Ali-
mentation)— under the direction of American citizens,
who should certify, as representatives of Mr. Brand
Whitlock, that the food was equitably apportioned and
consumed only by the Belgian civil population.
This plan was not for the assistance of the city of
Brussels alone but was for the whole of Belgium.
The London Times of October twenty-fourth, 1914,
says:
A Commission has been set up in London under the title
of " The American Commission for Relief in Belgium."
The Brussels Committee reports feeding 300,000 daily.
On November fourth it states:
The Commission for Relief in Belgium yesterday issued
their first weekly report, 3 London Wall Buildings. A
cargo was received yesterday at Brussels just in time. Esti-
mated monthly requirements :
60,000 tons grain
15,000 tons maize
3,000 tons rice and peas
Approved by the Spanish and American Ministers, Brussels.1
1 See Appendix III, page 333.
BRAND WHITLOCK 185
BRAND WHITLOCK
The Spanish Minister — the Marquis of Villalobar y
O'Neill — I first met in Brussels in December. He was
as Irish as the maternal half of his name, thoroughly
simpatico, a trained diplomat, keen-eyed, heavy-set, of
charming manners and force of character, whose influ-
ence with the Belgians was great. He and Mr. Brand
Whitlock were the only diplomatic representatives who
remained in Brussels after the occupation. Like Mr.
Whitlock, the Marquis of Villalobar had been a patron
of the Central Relief Committee of Brussels, and when
that organism was expanded to take in the whole of
Belgium he became, with Mr. Whitlock, Minister-patron
of the Belgian National Relief Committee.
Among the remnants of the former diplomatic circle
was a delightful Mexican charge d'affaires, destined also
to help in Belgian relief work, with the inappropriate
name of German Bulle. Waxing and waning revolutions
in Mexico had made Senor Bulle careless of his official
status, which was, as defined by Hugh Gibson, secretary
of the American Legation, " representative of a coun-
try without a government to a government without a
country."
The American Legation was a busy place, for the in-
terests of half a dozen belligerent nations were in
American hands, and the busiest person in it was the
secretary. Hugh S. Gibson was an alert, slender young
i86 STARVING BELGIUM
Hoosier of about thirty, with the hawk-like Yankee look,
keen dark eyes, crisp hair always in place, fine firm
mouth, slender hands, and few gestures. His wit and
fearlessness were the talk of Brussels. He drove into
Louvain under fire to report to the Legation on condi-
tions. He rode into Antwerp while the siege was in
progress, carrying a Belgian Minister of State to present
to King Albert a confidential message from Governor-
General von der Goltz. The King repulsed the mes-
senger, and the Minister of State reported afterward
that he was coerced into going. But for Gibson the
journey was a routine matter of business, even if the
hood of his motor-car was shot off en route. He had
been frequently under fire and he had the happy faculty
of telling about his exploits without the taint of boastful-
ness.
Like most of the Americans in Belgium, Gibson was
dogged by spies. One of these hangers-on made himself
so conspicuous that Gibson began to take notice of him
and to treat him familiarly, much to the spy's disgust.
One very rainy day the pet spy was discovered standing
under the dripping eaves of a neighboring house. Gib-
son caught up a raincoat and hurried over to the man.
" Look here, old fellow," he said in German. " I'm
going to be in the Legation for three hours. You put
on this coat and go home. Come back in three hours
and I'll let you watch me for the rest of the day."
Ante-bellum Baedekers have not starred the American
BRAND WHITLOCK 187
Legation at number 74 rue de Treves, Brussels. It is
no worse and no better than most American legations,
but it is not a beauty spot in a Belgian pilgrimage.
Straight walls enclose the Whitlock residence, a dingy
plaque with the Legation seal leans forward over the
door, a flag droops weakly from its staff in the incessant
rains, and the dull streets are empty. The house itself
is a severe rectangle with a pleasant reception room and
dining-room upstairs, but with gloomy offices below, to
which one is led by way of a white, sepulchral hall, where
a plaster bust of Washington stares undisturbed at
eternity.
One usually found Mr. Whitlock sitting before a gas
grate in a room where winter and summer the windows
were closed. He rarely walked out. Almost the only
times he left the Legation were for automobile rides in a
closed limousine.
He always looked tired and worn. The academic
severity of his face is accentuated by his thinness, and
his eyes have the tense look of a man constantly strain-
ing to see something too close to him. He is the tall,
scholarly, cloistral type of American gentleman, so often
sacrificed to practicalities in a work-a-day world ; a man
happier in libraries than in executive offices; happiest of
all, perhaps, in the atmosphere of universities. The dry,
mechanical precision of his speech rarely changes pitch
or tempo, and he speaks as he writes: academically, in
the best sense of the word.
1 88 STARVING BELGIUM
A day or two after the war broke out, a friend of Mr.
Whitlock's in America received a letter written from the
seclusion of a chateau near Brussels, where the Minister
was writing a novel. There was no hint, no thought of
war in the letter. The writer whimsically deplored the
idle life of an American representative in Europe. " I
am afraid, after all, that I am made for a more active
existence," was the substance of what he wrote. " There
is nothing to do here."
There was something of the same aloofness from
contemporary affairs in our first conversation, as
if literature and not life had again gained the upper
hand.
" How do they make maple sugar back home ? " Mr.
Whitlock asked.
I described the process as best I could, adding that
after a plethora of sugar a bite or two of sour pickle
will clear the appetite for more ! " But why do you ask
me that?"
" I had just reached a ' sugaring off ' episode in my
novel when the war began, and I have often wondered
since how we used to make maple sugar in Ohio." . . .
The Fates have not been overkind to Mr. Whitlock.
Beginning as a newspaper reporter in Chicago — he was
born in Urbana, Ohio, on March 4, 1869 — he definitely
determined to be a man of letters. He studied law, was
admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894 and to the bar of the
Photograph by Paul Thompson
BRAND WHITLOCK
BRAND WHITLOCK 189
State of Ohio in 1897. He was a friend of Governor
Altgeld of Illinois, Tom Johnson of Cleveland, and
" Golden Rule " Jones of Toledo, Ohio, whom he suc-
ceeded as mayor in 1905. He was re-elected in 1907,
and again in 1909 and 1911. And all the time he was
writing. " The Thirteenth District," " The Turn of the
Balance," " The Fall Guy," " Forty Years of It,"— these
of his books are widely read ; but Mr. Whitlock has never
had time to do the writing which he wants most to do.
With the outbreak of the war his placid life as a
diplomat, " lying abroad for the good of his country,"
as Sir Henry Wotton wittily defined the mission of
diplomacy, was invaded by a storm of horrors such as
the most self-contained could not resist. Mr. Whitlock
was the representative of the only great neutral power
left in the world and he was at the very center of the
cyclone. Waves of refugees, many of them utterly desti-
tute, all of them in a state of abject panic and demorali-
zation, thronged into Brussels as the Germans advanced.
Day by day their numbers and their distress increased.
Relief measures were imperative unless the fugitives
were to starve by the roadside or be driven in despera-
tion to plunder right and left. Mr. Whitlock had lived
all his life in the amiable atmosphere of Middle Western
liberalism; he was humane and kindly and idealistic.
He belonged to the " Free Speech League " and prison
reform associations ; his impulses and ideals were gener-
ous, and now before his eyes a nation was being throt-
igo STARVING BELGIUM
tied. It was natural and I think it was typically Ameri-
can for Mr. Whitlock to do what he did. He threw
himself at once into the work of relief. The American
Legation became the foundation head for all sorts of
help and advice. Bread lines were formed and supplied,
soup kitchens were opened, and depots where the naked
could be clothed; and after the German armies entered
Brussels on August twentieth, 1914, the American Le-
gation afforded the one stable point around which the
demoralized population could rally.
That is Mr. Whitlock' s unforgettable contribution to
Belgium and especially to the city of Brussels. He has
represented to a people imprisoned and oppressed the
ideals of freedom and helpfulness which we like to think
are characteristically American.
And that is what the Belgians will never forget. That
is why, on Washington's Birthday, they filed before the
heavy doors at 74 rue de Treves — men, women, and chil-
dren, of all classes ; a few in furs, more with shawls over
their heads and sabots on their feet; professors, noble-
men, artisans, shopkeepers, artists, functionaries of the
State, slum babies, and peasants — dropping their cartes
de visile — engraved, printed, or written on slips of stiff
cardboard torn from paper boxes — in tribute to Mr.
Whitlock and the nation which he represents.
To Belgians and to Americans the Legation was a
haven of refuge. A vast weight of suspicion hung upon
HERBERT C. HOOVER 191
us all. We almost feared to think ; we could never speak
out. The American Legation was the only spot in Bel-
gium where one might talk and listen without fear
of spies; where even in the midst of war one might
share for a while the sheltered, test-tube existence of
diplomatic representatives abroad. And for that we were
deeply grateful.
To the popularity of the Legation Mrs. Whitlock con-
tributed much. Her tact and sympathy, her charm and
good sense were at every one's command. She also took
a prominent part in relief work in Brussels. She was
president-patroness of the Children's Aid (Aide et Pro-
tection aux (Euvres de I'Enfance) and of the Commit-
tee for the Relief of Lace Workers (le Comite de la
Dent elle). At jier little Friday receptions the women
always knitted for the poor.
HERBERT C. HOOVER
" Who is Hoover ? " I asked of every American I met
in Brussels.
" Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium
— Going to be one of the biggest figures of the war."
" But who is he now ? "
" Mining engineer — Calif ornian — Lives in London —
Directs a lot of mines all over the world — Employs
one hundred and twenty-five thousand men — Annual out-
put of his mines is worth as much as the total annual
output of metals of California. He's a consulting en-
i92 STARVING BELGIUM
gineer and financier and administrator — Interested in
everything — Oil fields, half a dozen engineering, con-
struction, and development companies. Everybody in
London knows Hoover. If any one on earth can feed
Belgium, he can."
Later I knew more of him : that he comes of Quaker
stock; was born at West Branch, Iowa, in 1874; gradu-
ated from Leland Stanford University, California, tak-
ing his degree of B. A. in mining engineering in 1895 ;
spent a year with the United States Geological Survey
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was assistant manager
of the Carlisle mines in New Mexico and the Morning
Star mines in California, and at the age of twenty-four
went to West Australia as chief of the mining staff of
Bewick, Moreing, and Company. He married Miss Lou
Henry of Monterey, California in 1899, and with his
bride went to China as chief engineer of the Chinese Im-
perial Bureau of Mines. Next year he took part in the
defense of Tientsin during the Boxer disturbances.
After that he was engaged in the construction of Ching
Wang Tow harbor, and was general manager of the
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company; and a year
later, in 1902, became a partner in the firm of Bewick,
Moreing, and Company, mine operators, of London. He
has been consulting engineer for more than fifty mining
companies.
It reads like the record of a crowded life, but it is
HERBERT C. HOOVER 193
only a prelude to his real work. By the first of January,
1915, all the world knew of Hoover, knew that to him
more than to any one else is due the creation and
maintenance of the Commission for Relief in Belgium,
the day to day toil on behalf of seven million four hun-
dred thousand non-combatants in Belgium and two mil-
lion one hundred and forty thousand in northern
France caught in the nets of war, the enlisting of the
sympathy of the world on their behalf, the organization
and successful operation within two or three weeks by
a body of volunteers of relief measures involving an an-
nual turnover of almost one hundred million dollars.
That, as all the world knows today, is the achievement
of Herbert C. Hoover, American.
In appearance he is astonishingly youthful, smooth-
shaven, dark haired, with cool, watchful eyes, clear brow,
straight nose, and firm, even mouth. His chin is round
and hard.
One might not mark him in a crowd. There is noth-
ing theatrical or picturesque in his looks or bearing, for
from his Quaker forebears he has inherited a dislike for
sham and show of any sort. At work he seems passive
and receptive. He stands still or sits still when he talks,
perhaps jingling coins in his pocket or playing with a
pencil. His repertory of gestures is small. He can be
so silent that it hurts.
Being an American he sometimes acts first and ex-
194 STARVING BELGIUM
plains afterwards. But his explanations, like his actions,
are direct and self-sufficient.
In the Outlook for September eighth, 1915, Lewis R.
Freeman describes Hoover's contempt for precedent, his
fondness for the fait accompli; for action first and ex-
planation later. He tells how, before the Commission
was fairly on its feet, there came a day when it was a
case of snarling things in red tape and letting Belgium
starve, or getting food shipped and letting governments
howl. Hoover naturally chose the latter.
" When the last bag had been stowed and the hatches
were battened down," writes Mr. Freeman, " Hoover
went in person to the one Cabinet Minister able to ar-
range for the only things he could not provide himself
— clearance papers. 'If I do not get four cargoes of
food to Belgium by the end of the week,' he said bluntly,
' thousands are going to die from starvation, and many
more may be shot in food riots.'
" ' Out of the question/ said the distinguished Minister.
' There is no time, in the first place, and if there was
there are no good wagons to be spared by the railways,
no dock hands, and no steamers; moreover, the Channel
is closed for a week to merchant vessels while troops are
being transported to the Continent/
" ' I have managed to get all of these things/ Hoover
replied quietly ; ' and am now through with them all ex-
cept the steamers. This wire tells me that these are now
Courtesy of The Bellman and The Northwestern Miller
HERBERT CLARK HOOVER
HERBERT C. HOOVER 195
loaded and ready to sail, and I have come to have you
arrange for their clearance/
" The great man gasped. * There have been — there are
even now — men in the Tower for less than you have
done/ he ejaculated. ' If it was for anything but Bel-
gian Relief — if it was anybody but you, young man — I
should hate to think of what might happen. As it is —
er — I suppose there is nothing to do but congratulate
you on a jolly clever coup. I'll see about the clearance
at once/ "
Mr. Freeman quotes a member of the Commission as
saying, " You have heard, doubtless, that Lloyd George
has the reputation of being the most persuasive man in
England. Well, a few months ago, when we were try-
ing to simplify our work by arranging for an extension
of exchange facilities on Brussels, the then Chancellor
of the Exchequer sent for Hoover. I will tell the story
as Lloyd George himself told it to some friends at the
Liberal Club a few days later.
" ' " Mr. Hoover," I said, " I find I am quite unable to
grant your request iri the matter of Belgian exchange,
and I have asked you to come here that I might explain
why." Without waiting for me to go on, my boyish-
looking caller began speaking. . . . For fifteen
minutes he spoke without a break — just about the
clearest expository utterance I have ever heard on any
subject. He used not a word too much, nor yet a word
too few. By the time he had finished I had come to
i96 STARVING BELGIUM
realize, not only the importance of his contentions, but,
what was more to the point, the practicability of grant-
ing his request. So I did the only thing possible under
the circumstances — told him I had never understood the
question before, thanked him for helping me to under-
stand it, and saw to it that things were arranged as he
wanted them/ "
On April tenth, 1915, a submarine torpedoed one of
the food ships chartered by the Commission; a week
later a German hydro-aeroplane tried to drop bombs on
the deck of another Commission ship, so Hoover paid
a flying visit to Berlin. He was at once assured that no
more incidents of the sort would occur.
"Thanks," said Hoover. "Your Excellency, have
you heard the story of the man who was nipped by a
bad-tempered dog? He went to the owner to have the
dog muzzled.
" ' But the dog won't bite you/ insisted the owner.
" ' You know he won't bite me, and I know he won't
bite me/ said the injured party doubtfully, ' but the ques-
tion is, does the dog know ? ' ' . . .
" Herr Hoover," said the high official, " pardon me
if I leave you for a moment. I am going at once to
' let the dog know/ "
Hoover has a habit of going straight to the highest
authority with anything he has on hand. He never
HERBERT C. HOOVER 197
wastes time on the titled office boys who administer so
much of the machinery of this world of ours. When he
meets a new problem he takes it to an expert. When he
wants an obstacle removed from his path he goes to the
man who can remove it, or he removes it himself. He
gives no small coin of flattery or favors to figurehead
officials.
Of course he makes enemies. The wonder is that they
are so few. He uses men, throws them aside and for-
gets them, as every world architect must, for he has,
along with his amazing diplomatic skill, as frank a way
in dealing with men as with conditions. I have known
a word or a phrase of his to reveal a man to himself as
naked and as startled as a patient under psychoanalysis.
Hoover is a diplomat in the high, not in the trivial sense
of the word; a constructive artist in human destiny; a
leader who is too busy to waste time flattering the petty
pride of those he leads.
He appeals to the imagination and the dreams of men.
But he too is a slave to dreams. Today the Commission
for Relief in Belgium— the " C. R. B." as the Belgians
have nicknamed it — is his great dream. He wants the
names of all who serve in it to be swallowed up in the
organization, to be forgotten in service to Belgium. He
would like his own name to be forgotten in the same
way; but that is not to be. I am not a prophet or the
son of a prophet, but I know that the public service of
Herbert C. Hoover has just begun. He belongs not only
198 STARVING BELGIUM
to Belgium but to America, and as soon as the war is
over and Belgium is free, his own country will have need
of him.
THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM
In October, as Chairman of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, Mr. Hoover established his headquarters at 3
London Wall Buildings, London, England. The diplo-
matic direction of the entire work of Belgian relief, the
solicitation or purchase of supplies and their shipment,
were governed by this central office. The active members
of the Commission, all of them volunteers and most of
them American citizens, consisted chiefly of personal
friends and business associates of Mr. Hoover; almost all
of them engineers, or men of careful technical training.
The Commission in London was modestly housed and
modestly manned. The general direction was in the
hands of Mr. Hoover; Colonel Millard Hunsiker was
director for Great Britain ; John Beaver White was pur-
chasing agent and manager of shipping; and Edgar
Rickard, editor of a mining journal, was manager of
publicity.*
The Brussels office, which was headquarters for all of
Belgium, at first was divided between the American Le-
gation and number 48 rue de Naples — the latter a typical
Brussels office building with unnecessary marble, pan-
eled oak cubby-holes for private offices, oak ceilings, oak-
1 See Appendix IV, page 334.
THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM 199
wainscot, and big mirrors. There was an oak mantel
with carven, well-fed cupids on it, American telephone
instruments on green baize tables, electric lights, and deep
comfortable chairs. Later the headquarters were trans-
ferred to a rambling suite at number 66 rue des Colonies.
The first director was Daniel Heinemann of Brussels,
and following him, Captain J. F. Lucey, Albert N. Con-
nett, Oscar T. Crosby, Professor Vernon L. Kellogg, and
W. B. Poland.
Rotterdam, the port of entry for all Belgian sup-
plies, was the principal shipping point, so that a trans-
shipping office for Commission goods was opened at 98
Haringvliet, on a tree-bordered Dutch lane lying beside
a busy canal where the schools of herring used to run,
and where nowadays market carts and fisherwomen,
motor-cars, delivery wagons, and peasant farmers in
whitewashed wooden shoes clatter leisurely by. A
century ago 98 Haringvliet was the residence of a
Dutch merchant prince. The ceilings bear allegorical
figures. Some of the walls are paneled. In the waiting-
room, which used to be the dining-room of the mansion,
is a massive fireplace, with long vertical Dutch mirrors
and wall paintings in the style of 1750, showing quiet
landscapes, Ruskin's " fat cattle and ditch-water," or
violent storms at sea.
Stolid Dutch and Flemish barge captains and dock
laborers stood in line below stairs. Captain J. F. Lucey,
the first Rotterdam director, sat in a roomy office on
200 STARVING BELGIUM
the second floor overlooking the Meuse — the river which
flows from Verdun, Dinant, Namur, and Liege, thence
through Holland to Rotterdam. From his windows he
could see the Commission barges as they left for Bel-
gium, their pilot houses decorated with huge canvas flags
bearing the protective inscription, " Belgian Relief Com-
mission." He was a nervous, big, beardless American, a
volunteer, like all the rest, who left his business of manu-
facturing oil-well supplies to organize and direct a great
trans-shipping office in an alien land for an alien people.
Out of nothing he created a large staff of clerks —
American, Dutch, and Belgian — secured special permits
from the Dutch Government, even wrung from them per-
mission to break the laws whenever necessity dictated;
received the immense cargoes necessary to stave off Bel-
gian starvation; loaded them into canal boats; got from
the German Consul-General in Rotterdam passports for
cargoes and crews ; and shipped the foodstuffs consigned
personally to Mr. Brand Whitlock.1
A fleet of three hundred canal boats was engaged ex-
clusively for the Commission's work. By means of float-
ing elevators a nine thousand ton ship loaded with bulk
wheat could be unloaded in thirty-six hours and sent on
its way through the rivers and canals into Belgium. All
Dutch records for speedy freight handling were broken,
and still Belgium cried for food.2
1 See Appendix V, page 335-
8 See Appendix VI, page 335.
THE COMMISSION FOR RELIEF IN BELGIUM 201
By mid-November gift ships from the United States
were en route for Rotterdam, but the Canadian Province
of Nova Scotia was first in the translantic race. The
steamer " Tremorvah," out of Halifax, brought one
hundred and seventy-six tons of flour, forty-nine tons of
meat and bacon, and two thousand three hundred and
thirty-eight tons miscellaneous, — everything edible which
could be got on short notice by the generous Nova
Scotians and thrust into a ship. The " Tremorvah "
reached Rotterdam on November fifteenth.1
As an American citizen I was deeply interested in the
budding work' of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.
Through Dr. Henry van Dyke, American Minister in
The Hague and an honorary chairman of the Commis-
sion, and through Captain Lucey, the Rotterdam director,
I learned that Americans were urgently needed in Bel-
gium to oversee the distribution of food in each of the
provinces and to certify that all of it went to the Bel-
gians. Men were wanted who knew both French and
German and who had business training, and they were
wanted at once. It was suggested that I go into Belgium
and help in whatever way I could.
The suggestion was made to me at four o'clock in the
afternoon of November twenty-third. I left for Brus-
sels next morning at eight o'clock, by way of Bergen op
Zoom and Antwerp.
1 See Appendix VII, page 336.
202 STARVING BELGIUM
On December eleventh I was again in Antwerp, this
time holding Mr. Brand Whitlock's power-of -attorney as
chief delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium
in charge of the fortress and province — a territory as
large as the State of Rhode Island, and with a popula-
tion of more than a million.
A DEAD CITY
It was the season of Saint Nicholas, with Christmas
only a fortnight away; a time when all the world has
a right to be merry. But it seemed as if there could be no
real Christmas in 1914; food and clothing would be bless-
ing enough for the Belgians. At the office of the Red
Cross, at number 30 Place de Meir, hung a pathetic
notice :
" This year Saint Nicholas cannot make a proper dis-
tribution of presents to the poor children of Belgium.
Therefore it will be necessary to have useful things to give
to the little ones: — a pair of slippers, a warm dress, or
something of the sort — for distribution through the hos-
pitals, children's refuges, and creches!'
A few shops exhibited the customary Christmas cakes,
gingerbreads, and candies, although the stock was
strictly limited on account of the lack of milk and eggs,
and in a department-store on the Place de Meir stood a
ruddy lay figure of Saint Nicholas in a bishop's golden
mitre and chasuble, white lace cotta and black cassock,
mittens, and gold crosier, — a touch at least of the Christ-
A DEAD CITY 203
mas season, although the good bishop did not resemble
our jolly, homely Santa Claus. . . .
The silence of the dead metropolis was shrilly broken
by old women, screaming " Handelsblad! La Presse!"
to people too poor to buy newspapers. The hum and
throb of industry were gone ; the quays were empty ; fac-
tories were shut; acres of rusting wagons and rotting
ships lined the northern basins; the warehouses were
sealed and guarded by German soldiers; labor was dis-
persed, and the very air was idle and noisome.
There was nothing to do but to promenade, so the
streets were thronged with women in mourning and idle
men who passed aimlessly up and down, or studied the
pillar-posts where the German Government posted its
regulations in the German, Flemish, and French
languages. Barricades of sandbags and a row of ugly
rapid-fire guns pointed down the avenue de Keyzer from
the Central Railway Station. Few beggars were abroad :
the crowds were not mendicants. But they walked aim-
lessly and indifferently, and their faces were inexpressibly
sad. Refugees were drifting back from Holland : thirty
thousand were lodged in the city. Many of them were
without homes, most were without money, all were with-
out work.
Long Hnes of people stood every day at the Pass
Bureau to petition for passes to Brussels or the suburbs
of Antwerp, for three lines of German sentries girdled
204 STARVING BELGIUM
the fortress and permitted no one to go or come without
the magic script furnished by the Pass Bureau, " for a
consideration. " Passes were costly articles. Peasants
coming to town on market days to sell their scanty
stock of vegetables and milk paid sometimes as high as
three marks for the privilege. Draft animals were few,
because of the requisitions, so one frequently saw dogs,
and sometimes men and women, pulling the heaviest
carts over the cobble-stones.
Out of the crowding impressions of my first week's
stay in Antwerp as delegate for the Commission for Re-
lief in Belgium, comes a composite picture of helplessness
and hopelessness, lightened by the incorrigible optimism
of one man. That man was Louis Franck, president of
the Provincial Relief Committee. On the day of my ar-
rival in Antwerp I went at once to the beautiful Town
Hall, a structure famous before the " Spanish Terror,"
— a Flemish gem in old gold and ivory, set in a Flem-
ish square, all ringed about with guild halls and medieval
shops. At the door stood German sentries and a stench
of cabbage soup swam out of the open doors, for most
of the guard was at mess, laughing and eating below
stairs.
In the office of the Burgomaster of Antwerp, Jan de
Vos, I found Mynheer Louis Franck, president of the
Inter-communal Commission and the provincial branch
of the National Relief Committee (le Comite Provincial
A DEAD CITY 205
de Secours et d' Alimentation) . Through a clear pane
in the stained-glass windows behind him, I caught a
glimpse of the cathedral tower, with the German flag
flaunting at its top; but the appearance and surroundings
of Mr. Franck filled the eye completely. He sat in a
paneled room of Flemish oak and gold, behind a mas-
sive oaken desk, facing a magnificent marble chimney-
piece from the old abbey of Tongerloo; his bold head
framed with a cascade of curly, jet-black hair and
black Assyrian beard. He was forty-seven years old,
in the prime of his strength, with an optimistic faith in
the future of Belgium which was contagious. Later I
was to learn more of him ; to recognize in him one of the
keenest intelligences in Belgium, a famous maritime
lawyer, the legal-minded type of adroit politician, and a
born leader of men. I learned to know him as a Fleming
from a Flemish Province, a leader in the Flemish Move-
ment, but as a cosmopolitan as well, and an admirable
orator in five languages beside his native Flemish.1
We walked together into the Marriage Hall to open
the first sitting of the Provincial Relief Committee.
Down upon us from the walls smiled paintings of mar-
riage ceremonies, Gaulish, Roman, Old Flemish, of the
time of Rubens, and of the period of the French Revolu-
tion. It was the hall where the civil ceremony preceding
all Antwerp marriages must take place, and where, if the
persons be prominent, the Burgomaster himself gives the
1 See Appendix VIII, page 337.
206 STARVING BELGIUM
bride the famous white and red rose which is the emblem
of Antwerp. But our assembly was neither gay nor fes-
tive. It was a confused vision of bearded gentlemen,
grave as prophets, in long black coats and stiff collars,
whom later I was to know as loyal co-workers and
patriots. They were aldermen and notable citizens of
the city, country burgomasters and provincial deputies;
representatives of all three political parties — Catholic,
Liberal, Socialist; of all three classes of society — noble,
bourgeois, and proletarian; and of a variety of profes-
sions and callings. They served without pay.
Up to that time no American foodstuffs had been re-
ceived or distributed in Antwerp.1
AMERICAN DELEGATE FOR ANTWERP
I left the meeting of the Committee and walked to 74
rue du Peage. On my way I stopped at the cathedral.
Workmen were rapidly removing all trace of the damage
caused by the bombardment; the stone rail had been re-
paired with cement, leaving a strange leprous patch, and
1 Our first circular letter to the one hundred and sixty-five com-
munes belonging to the province of Antwerp, bore date of December
eleventh, the day of my arrival. It asked : i. the total population of
the commune; 2. financial resources; 3. immediate financial needs;
4. inventory of existing foodstuffs of every sort ; 5. estimated daily
necessities in foodstuffs, — the basis for flour being not more than
250 grams per day per person ; 6. estimated daily necessities in fod-
der for the cattle ; 7. if a building were ready to serve as communal
food depot; 8. if medicine were needed in the commune. The
answers to these inquiries were to be attested by the burgomasters
and sealed with the communal seal.
Louis FRANCK
AMERICAN DELEGATE FOR ANTWERP 207
I was amused to see the stall formerly lettered " English
Confessor," now covered with a card in German script
bearing the words, " Field Preacher Confessor Doctor
Braun."
Through seared and smashed byways I went to the
familiar street, past the ruins of houses, their windows
barred with wood or blocked with canvas, and on the
door at number 74 I found Donald Thompson's name
and address branded for posterity with indelible
pencil.
There were two candles in the hallway, and a box of
matches, just as we had left them. It was still and dark
as a tomb. Down in the kitchen was the familiar clutter
of bottles and pans; in the cyclone cellar where we had
weathered the bombardment were the names of the four
of us — Thompson, Weigle, de Meester, and me — just as
they had been written for the eyes of our heirs on the
night the shelling began. Upstairs in what had been my
bedroom I found the pile of French books which had
amused me so, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox's " Poems of
Passion" lying safe on top of the heap. ... On
the third floor was a mountain of plaster and I picked
up half a pint of lead pellets in the midst of it. On
the fourth floor in the debris of the walls were a
broken couch, a smashed wardrobe, cracked mirrors, and
torn chairs, beds and bed linen, all tumbled together by
the explosion. The hole where the shell had entered was
covered with canvas neatly nailed.
208 STARVING BELGIUM
At the American Consulate where Donald Thompson
photographed the battalions of Germans tramping along
the rue Leys on October tenth, I met the kindly old Con-
sul-General, Henry W. Diederich, and the Vice-Consul,
Tuck Sherman. Thanks to them, all over Antwerp
were signs, " under the protection of the American Con-
sulate," which may have moderated German thorough-
ness and which certainly heartened the Belgians. Messrs.
Diederich and Sherman granted me office space in the
Consulate and after a day or two arranged with an in-
surance company in the suite below the Consular offices
to give me space of my own. In the insurance offices a
caretaker and two or three clerks dismally played at
business, keeping the long hours of the ordinary Belgian
business-day, dusting, sweeping, casting up accounts, and
puzzling over cryptic anagrams which prophesied the
Kaiser's death or the capture of Berlin. They were de-
lighted to have me near them, for in their eyes I guar-
anteed protection from the Germans.
My furniture consisted of a modest table, a typewriter,
and five chairs.
My duties as American delegate were necessarily ill-
defined but capable of almost unlimited extension. Hold-
ing the power-of -attorney of the American Minister,
I was in theory the owner of all supplies im-
ported into the province of Antwerp by the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium from the time they reached
AMERICAN DELEGATE FOR ANTWERP 209
me on the canal boats from Rotterdam up to the
time of their consumption by the Belgians. The Com-
mission's imports were consigned personally to Mr.
Whitlock, so that as provincial delegate I acted as con-
signee for the province in which I served. Once at the
wharves the contents of the boats were under my direc-
tion, and in theory this applied to the later steps, — to
their transference to the docks or the Commission ware-
houses in Antwerp, Turnhout, Malines, and Tamise; to
their transport thence by canals or light railways to the
regional warehouses ; then to the one hundred and sixty-
five communes; and so to the million and more indi-
vidual consumers. The Americans in Belgium were in
honor bound to know what became of every item of sup-
plies, for only on terms like these would Great Britain
modify her blockade in favor of Belgium.
It was necessary, then, for the American delegate to
be familiar in detail not only with the transportation
and distribution of imports, but also with the condition
and needs of every commune in his province, and to re-
port on these matters regularly to the headquarters of
the Commission for Relief in Belgium and to the Ameri-
can Minister.
The course of the war had abolished the independent,
democratic life of the Belgian people. Out of the chaos
had emerged the neutral Commission for Relief and the
Belgian National Relief Committee pledged to extraor-
dinary caution in handling supplies, so that at times the
2io STARVING BELGIUM
American delegate could not help appearing as a sort of
Oriental satrap. There were the usual routine problems
of insurance, shipping, bills of lading, warehousing, and
trans-shipping, the preparation of extensive reports,
debits and credits, where the delegate's share tended to
become more and more supervisory; but complaints and
misunderstandings on the part of the German authorities,
inadequate communal reports, or friction of one sort and
another, complicated by the political disabilities under
which our Belgian coadjutors labored, made it necessary
for the delegate to be jack-of -all-trades and all things
to all men. In a situation so critical as ours a small
matter might easily develop into a crisis threatening the
whole.1
The plan for the relief work required a highly cen-
tralized organization. Instead of the comparatively sim-
ple problem of feeding, the work developed, almost in
spite of itself, into a comprehensive plan of national
preservation ; all under the drastic conditions imposed by
modern warfare.2
MISERY IN THE CAMPINE
The first task was to secure reports from each com-
mune on the amount of destitution, the condition of em-
ployment, the prevalence of sickness, the possibility of
providing work for the workless, and the need of food;
1 See Appendix IX, page 338.
* See Appendix X, page 339.
MISERY IN THE CAMPINE 211
then from these to reduce to a card-index formula the
conditions in the province and ultimately the condition
of every individual who required relief.
In a borrowed automobile and with passes which I
requested from the German authorities, Messrs. Frangois
Franck, A. Palmans, and I visited the village of Boisschot
on December sixteenth. The conditions we found there
were fairly typical. The town was a bare oasis of wat-
tled or brick cottages in the less prosperous part of the
province, on the edge of what Belgians call the " Cam-
pine " — a country district, Oligocene in geological forma-
tion, supporting scrub evergreens and purple heather more
readily than any other growing thing, and cut by a few
slim watercourses lined with pollard willows.
Wayside shrines of Our Lady of Sorrows were
decorated with fluttering strips of white paper, but other-
wise one saw few signs of life. Almost every village
through which we passed had been hammered with shells.
Chickens and live-stock were rarities. Fear of the Ger-
mans was universal.
The Town House of Boisschot was a small, ugly
building, not much superior to the old-fashioned Little
Red School House of American pioneering days. The
Burgomaster's office was a cold, bare rectangle, with
sanded floors, a few thin chairs, and a long table piled
with papers. A cheap lithograph of King Albert and
Queen Elizabeth hung on the whitewashed walls of the
room, and a framed proclamation printed in German,
212 STARVING BELGIUM
Flemish, and French, signed by the commandant of the
district.
Our borrowed Minerva limousine puffed stertorously
at the door in the midst of a crowd of wooden-shoed
villagers — the first automobile they had seen in four
months; while inside I found myself vigorously shaken
by the hand and on friendly terms with a big blond
Burgomaster named Baron de Gruben and a thin,
bearded spectre who was the communal secretary.
Our questionnaire was written in Flemish, but out of
deference for my ignorance the questions were asked
and answered in French.
" Monsieur le Bourgmestre le Baron de Gruben, it is a
gentleman very excellent," whispered Messrs. Franck
and Palmans before we began. " Most of our burgo-
masters ask for more than they have a right to. He is
not so. He is a fine man, that Baron de Gruben. You
must always be on your guard with the Belgian burgo-
master, Monsieur le Delegue. The Belgian is a man who
always complains — qui toujours se plaint. And he is
stubborn, too. Always tell him what he must not do,
then he will do what you wish. He is a man who goes in
the door marked ' Exit ' and comes out the door marked
' Entrance '!" . . .
Burgomaster ? " Baron de Gruben, present," we wrote
the answer.
Police or guard ? " Monsieur Jean van Caster is about
MISERY IN THE CAMPINE 213
to return. He has been replaced provisionally by a private
guard."
Doctors ? " Messieurs Dens and Goossens, present."
Instructors ? " Two under-instructors are prisoners of
war; one at Munster, the other at Sennewald, in Ger-
many."
Clergy ? " Monsieur le Cure and Monsieur le Vicaire
were made prisoners with many cures of neighboring
towns. Twenty priests are interned at Munster."
Notables? "The Germans arrested two hundred
civilians and transported them to Germany. Since then
one hundred have been released ; those over forty-five or
under sixteen years old. The others are interned at
Paderborn in Westphalia. Among the prisoners in Ger-
many are thirty fathers of families."
Population ? " Three thousand three hundred, of
whom nine hundred have to be supported by charity.
"The town was never bombarded and therefore no
houses have been destroyed, but twice the whole popula-
tion fled and twice the town was pillaged, — private
houses and public buildings."
Is there work? " There is no work of any sort."
Is there a relief committee ? "A small volunteer com-
mittee is struggling to give soup and bread."
What money is on hand ? " The treasury has two
thousand francs, to which three thousand francs is about
to be added which the Burgomaster has secured as a loan
from the Comite df Assistance of Antwerp."
214 STARVING BELGIUM
Maladies? "None."
What things are lacking? "The commune suffers
especially for lack of flour, peas, beans, rice, bacon, her-
ring, petroleum, and coal."
Monthly budget? "For the clergy, fifty francs; po-
lice, ninety francs; personnel, which includes the school,
still open in spite of the terrible condition of the times,
one thousand one hundred francs; electric light, one
hundred francs; cost of communal administration, three
hundred and ten francs; and cost of maintaining nine
hundred persons in distress, five thousand four hundred
and sixty francs. Total, seven thousand one hundred
and ten francs."
" Now, Monsieur Burgomaster, you can persuade the
communal officers to reduce their own salaries from
patriotic motives ? "
" Yes, I think so."
" They have done so in many communes already, — re-
duced their salaries one-half or one-third or two-
thirds."
" That is excellent. They are true patriots ! "
"And the Committee will allow you one thousand
francs a month."
" Ah, messieurs, thank you ! thank you ! We shall do
our best. But we must have clothes, too. We must have
blankets and clothes — anything. Send us anything. We
have been twice pillaged. We have nothing. We still
eat, but we have no clothes."
MISERY IN THE CAMPINE 215
On our return we passed through Heyst op den Berg,
and my heart thrilled at the climb out of the flat Belgian
plain, although the Berg is only a little hill. One could
imagine oneself for a moment on the roof of the world,
after the incessant monotony of Flemish polders and
Campine. From the Berg on a clear day one can see
Brussels and the outlines of Antwerp. From that hill,
too, the Germans had battered the forts of Lierre on their
final thrust into Antwerp.
In Koningshoyckt, a town of three thousand inhabi-
tants, ninety-eight houses had been completely destroyed,
and twenty-seven partially destroyed. In so small a vil-
lage the ruin was enormous. The church was anni-
hilated, but a pert statue of Leopold First stood in the
public square, unharmed by the shells.
The beautiful old town of Lierre had suffered dread-
fully from bombardment. It had been mercilessly ham-
mered and then burned, and lay in a confused pile,
smashed, scorched, and outraged. But peasants and
burghers were cleaning and piling bricks in the yawning
window openings, and with the incorrigible art-instinct of
the Belgians were arranging them in crosses and dia-
monds instead of plain, mathematical courses. A few
frame shelters were appearing in the ruins. Typhoid
raged. Fire, storm, and disease had been loosed on the
unhappy people.
The town of Duffel, too, had suffered terribly. It lay
in a country of kitchen gardens and numbered' eight
216 STARVING BELGIUM
thousand people. It had been drowned out by the open-
ing of the dykes and then shot to pieces. Three thou-
sand one hundred and eighty persons were being fed at
the public expense, and the town had literally nothing.
Two hundred and fifty houses were completely demol-
ished; all the others had suffered more or less. The
commune got a few francs every day for relief work by
taxing all, except Germans, who crossed the bridge over
the little river Nethe.
COMMUNICATIONS
Working with a people who had no telegraph, no tele-
phone, no railways, no post office, and no freedom of
movement, my first effort was to establish regular com-
munications with Rotterdam and Brussels.
Commission telegrams, written in German and sent
through the German Civil Government to our head-
quarters, took not less than a day and a half in transit.
We could not use the military telephone.
To go from Antwerp to Brussels by train, a journey
which by rapide in peace time requires about thirty-five
minutes, now took two and a quarter hours. A pass for
this journey cost three marks, and the railway tariff was
twice as high as in peace time.1 There were few trains
and these were uncertain.
1 An old Flemish peasant applied for a pass at Antwerp.
" How long is this pass to be good for ? " growled the Ger-
man clerk.
" How long are you Germans going to stay in Belgium,
mynheer?" countered the peasant.
COMMUNICATIONS 217
A tugboat captain advertised cheap and rapid trans-
portation from Brussels to Antwerp by way of the
Scheldt and the canals, but this trip required more than
half a day and seemed a curious reversion to the facili-
ties of the 'forties. The only other way was to go by
cart or on foot, and the Antwerp-Brussels highway was
filled daily with nondescript carryalls or little jaunting
carts drawn by pitiful horses, donkeys, and dingo dogs.
To go to Rotterdam was, of course, much more diffi-
cult.
Edward D. Curtis, courier of the Commission, or,
as he preferred to be called, its " traveling secretary,"
was the sole reliable means of communication between
the Brussels headquarters, Antwerp, and the Rotterdam
office.
Curtis was twenty-four years old, a graduate of
Harvard, class of 1914, but already a veteran in the
service. Twice or even three times a week he motored
from Brussels to Rotterdam, carrying the Legation mail-
bags for Mr. Whitlock, the Consular mail for Consul-
General Henry W. Diederich, and the Commission mails
for Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, London, and New
York ; he imported new members of the Commission and
their baggage; and at odd times of the day or night he
turned up in every German Kommandantur en route,
usually under arrest, but always imperturbable. He
throve on silence and relished rules.
He drove in a long, low, rakish automobile, given him
2i8 STARVING BELGIUM
by Mr. Ernest Solvay, of the famous Solvay Process
Company, president of the National Committee ; his sole
companion a smart Belgian chauffeur. In mud-colored
raincoat with thick fur padding, slouch hat, soft shirt,
and high boots, Curtis turned up always unexpectedly at
Antwerp, his admirably insolent face as nearly like a
Japanese mask as he could make it, spattered with bits
from the surface of Flemish and Dutch highways. His
trips were not regularized until January. Then a system
of Commission couriers was arranged for all Belgium,
and Curtis went thrice each week from Brussels through
Antwerp to Bergen op Zoom, where he met a special
messenger who came and went from Rotterdam by train.
About ten days after my installation at Antwerp, Cur-
tis came in covered with mud and smiles and informed
me that three new Americans delegates and three Over-
land automobiles were on their way from Rotterdam to
Brussels.
"One of those automobiles is mine; n'est-ce pas?" I
asked, speaking the dialect of the Commission — a strange
hodge-podge of English and French with an occasional
spice of Flemish.
" Brussels say they intend to supply themselves,
and afterwards the provinces."
" Tell them two automobiles are coming. This office
has a motto, — it's ' Antwerp first ! '
An unexpected move by the German police made my
COMMUNICATIONS 219
highwayman's task easy. The new delegates and their
cars were arrested in Antwerp, and kept three hours at
the Kommandantur, so that it was not difficult for me
to confiscate the car I wanted. . . .
There is historical precedent for my conduct. Once on
a time there lived a giant named Druon Antigon in a
lowering castle where Antwerp now stands. Ship-
masters who rowed up the Scheldt to trade with the
ancient Belgae, or sailed down river to carry civiliza-
tion and liqueurs to the painted Picts and the naked
Frisians, were obliged to pay toll to the giant. If any
refused, old Antigon cut off the customs-dodger's right
hand and threw it into the Scheldt; and from this high-
handed procedure on the part of the first douanier, the
Flemish name, Antwerpen, — from hand, " hand " ; and
werfen, " to throw," — is supposed to be derived.
The legend tells further of a young hero named Brabo,
an ardent free-trader, it seems, who objected to Antigen's
tariff restrictions, fought and conquered him, and then
cut off the giant's hand and flung it into the river.
Hence my seizure of the automobile had excellent, if
perilous, precedent. . . .
A few days after the automobile incident, Curtis
brought me two aides, Bennett H. Branscomb and
Oliver C. Carmichael, American Rhodes Scholars from
Oxford University, slangily called " Rhodesters," who
had volunteered their services for the work of Belgian
220 STARVING BELGIUM
relief. They were the first of a flood of young Americans
eager to help the Commission and Belgium in any way
they could.
A VISIT FROM HOOVER
The canals and light railways * are the life of Belgium.
No other country has so perfect a transport system. In
Belgium, as in Holland, one can reach almost every point
by water. The valleys of the Scheldt and the Meuse
spring like the sticks of a fan from an imaginary center
at Rotterdam, and from these in turn in all directions
radiate navigable waterways. The light railways, too,
are models of their kind in cheapness and accessibility,
but many light railways were blocked, or had suspended
operations; much of their rolling-stock had been de-
stroyed, or taken into Holland before the German ad-
vance. As for the canals, some of the dykes had been
cut and were not yet repaired; bridges had been blown
up for military reasons; barges had been sunk; and at
important points the Belgians were not permitted to ap-
proach the canal embankments for fear they might at-
tempt to damage the system to the detriment of the
German armies.
On December seventeenth Captain Sunderland, U. S. A.,
attached to the American Legation in The Hague,
visited me in Antwerp and brought an urgent request
1 Narrow-gauge steam railways, called in French, vicinaux, or
neighborhood railways.
A VISIT FROM HOOVER 221
from Captain J. F. Lucey at Rotterdam for information
regarding the Belgian canals. The Rotterdam office had
been in operation for eight weeks, yet in that time it had
secured practically no information regarding the condi-
tion of the Belgian waterways. In sheer desperation
Captain Lucey had dispatched canal-boats of flour, rice,
peas, and beans, without knowing whether the canals
were navigable or blocked.1
On a matter so vital as this I could get no data for
more than a week, and then I secured it from a Dutch
spy who was in cahoots with the Germans, and so was
able to travel through the Etappen district and along the
canals.
A stream of supplies glided by and was warehoused,
milled, distributed, baked, and consumed. Lighters daily
floated up the Scheldt bearing romantic names such as
" Marie Germaine," " Louisa/' " Ariel,;' " Deo Gloria,"
"Helene," "Rosalia," "Dorothea," "Maria Cecelia,"
" Josephina," " Madonna," " Maria Amelberga," " Fred-
1 In the province of Antwerp the canals were1 clear, except at
one point. Our distribution was dependent almost exclusively on
the waterways — a troublesome state of affairs if these ways should
freeze. The center of distribution was the city of Antwerp; sub-
centers — all reached by canals — were at Turnhout, Malines, and
Tamise. Under Antwerp we established sixteen cantonal or regional
centers ; under Turnhout, six ; under Malines, two ; and under
Tamise, two. From each of these centers, food was shipped once
a we'ek by wagon, light railway, or canal-boat. In every commune
there was a distributing center, usually in the schoolhouse or Town
House, where the supplies were1 weighed out in scales verified by the
American delegate or his inspector, and delivered to rich and poor
alike on presentation of a food-card.
222 STARVING BELGIUM
erika." A system of control was necessary, so that
we might report to Rotterdam and Brussels on the
passage of lighters not destined for Antwerp, for some-
times we spent days patrolling the canals in search of a
lighter which had dropped from sight almost as if swal-
lowed by Father Scheldt himself.
I appealed to Brussels for another assistant, especially
for this work, and they sent us W. W. Flint, another of
the indispensable " Rhodesters." He set out on a river
boat and disappeared for five days. Then he returned
to Antwerp with a tale of great adventures, arrests, de-
tentions, conferences, and agreements. He had done his
work well. Lillo, the frontier post on the Scheldt, was
obviously the spot for our control station to report on
the passage of Commission lighters.
Fort Lillo was a high, old-fashioned earthwork on the
Scheldt: a few trees, a few small Flemish houses in
orderly rows, a single customs house overlooking the river
— that was all. When we motored out to the customs post,
our limousine completely blocked the narrow lane before
the customs house and drew all the civil and military
population about us. Several Landsturm soldiers strolled
up, puffing away at their pipes and staring. The Belgian
population ranged itself silently about the car. The dead
silence, the dropped jaws, the fixed eyes of such crowds
were always disconcerting to us, but our Belgian
chauffeur seemed as indifferent as a good actor before
a crowded house.
A VISIT FROM HOOVER 223
Two Belgian customs officers in faded green uni-
forms and box caps came out, touched their foreheads,
and bowed gravely. We explained our wants. Ah, we
were the American Commission, then ? They would take
delight in giving us the names of all Commission lighters
passing Lillo. Name and shipment numbers, then ? Per-
haps the German officer would telegraph this informa-
tion to Mr. Hunt through the Civil Government at Ant-
werp, for the officer was obliging. They, the Belgians,
would be most happy to furnish the information regu-
larly. We, the Americans, were saving their live^. They
were infinitely grateful.
We lifted our hats, shook hands all round, and motored
to a small bar-room, — the office of the commandant.
He was a lonely young under-officer who greeted us
with obvious pleasure because we broke the monotony of
his exile. We explained our business.
" Certainly, certainly," he said. " I am pleased to
help. I will telephone every day what lighters pass
Lillo. It is a pleasure to help."
A day or two before Christmas, 1914, Curtis arrived
from Rotterdam and there preceded him into the Ant-
werp office a man in a raincoat and automobile cap, his
serious, boyish face splashed with mud.
" Mr. Hoover," explained Curtis, by way of introduc-
tion.
224 STARVING BELGIUM
It was the founder and Chairman of the Commission
for Relief in Belgium.
My guest quietly took a chair in a dark corner and
required no further attention from me, although I
thought he listened carefully to the word Curtis brought
me from Rotterdam, and to the messages I sent by him
to Brussels.
"You deserve better quarters," he said as he was
leaving.
" I have them already," I answered. " Mr. Edouard
Bunge, vice-president of our Belgian Committee, has
donated an excellent suite of offices in his bank for the
Commission's work."
"Urn. . . . Good-by," he said. . . .
That was my first encounter with Herbert Clark
Hoover.
THE CHRISTMAS SHIP
One of the thrilling experiences of the first month's
work was the coming of the " Christmas Ship," — the
steamer full of Christmas gifts presented by the children
of America to the children of war-ridden Belgium. I
was amazed to find that before the ship docked in Rot-
terdam the Belgian children knew all about it. By some
occult means of communication, such as the Sudanese are
reputed to employ, they had heard of the ship and under-
stood its meaning. Saint Nicholas's day had brought
them few presents. They were hungry for friendliness,
THE CHRISTMAS SHIP 225
and the thought of getting gifts from children across the
sea meant unspeakable joy to them.
We planned to distribute the presents on Christmas
Day, but difficulties arose. The German authorities de-
creed that every package should be opened in Rotterdam
and every scrap of writing taken out before the presents
were sent into Belgium. It was a tremendous task to
search the gifts. Notes written by the American chil-
dren to the Belgians were tucked away in all sorts of
places : in the bottoms of bags of candy, in the backs of
fairy books, in dolls, in pairs of shoes, in babies* dresses,
— in every likely and unlikely spot which a child's
imagination could think of as a convenient receptacle for
writing. And all the charming, naive little notes, pain-
fully copied by childish hands, had to be removed before
the presents could go forward.
It was too late to get them into Belgium by Christmas
Day, but three big motor-boats made the attempt. One
went to Brussels, one to Liege, and one came to Antwerp.
It brought boxes of clothing, outfits for babies, blankets,
caps, bonnets, cloaks, shoes of every description, babies'
boots, candy fish, striped candy canes, chocolates, and
mountains of nuts — nuts such as the Belgians had never
seen in their lives before — pecans, hickory nuts, Ameri-
can walnuts, and peanuts galore.
In one of the boxes of peanuts was a note which had
escaped the vigilance of the searchers at Rotterdam. It
was from Caleb Moss, of Texarkana, and he wrote in
226 STARVING BELGIUM
perfect certainty that the Belgian child who got the pea-
nuts could read what was so carefully spelled in pain-
ful English.
" I dug these peanuts myself for you," the letter ran.
" Please write me that you got them and what the Ger-
mans did to you and all." . . .
There were scores of dolls, French bisques smiling
pleasantly, pop-eyed rag dolls, old darky mammy dolls,
and Santa Clauses ; picture books, fairy books, and story
books. One child had written in the cover of her book,
" Father says I ought to send you my best picture book
but I think that this one will do."
I remember six linsey-woolsey dresses of a sort worn
only in the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, pitifully
ugly and cheap, but symbolizing as fine charity as any-
thing among the gifts. And there were bunched ears of
corn tied with twine, given by Americans as poor as the
Belgians for whom they were intended. These things
made American sympathy more real to me than all the
rest. My countrymen had " given what they could."
As a direct result of these gifts, all Belgium learned
the meaning of America's aid. Hitherto the people had
known us officially through our Minister and through
those of us who were beginning our service as delegates
of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. The gifts made
us and our country the personal givers of what Belgium
was to eat and to wear through the months or years of
THE CHRISTMAS SHIP 227
war. Never after that was American help thought of in
terms other than those of burning gratitude.
Replicas of the American flag were scattered among
the Christmas gifts, and through them our flag became
familiar to all Belgium. Its sensational and violent sym-
bolism must have seemed strange in a land accustomed
for the most part to tri-colors, vertically or horizontally
striped, but the Belgians loved our flag. At first we
bore it on all Commission automobiles, and our trips fre-
quently caused delightful demonstrations. The children,
especially, were sure to recognize the red-white-and-blue
and to wave and cheer as we darted by, although I think
there was a shade of disappointment when they first
learned that " the Americans " were not red-skins, that
they did not wear feathers in their hair, and that in
many respects they resembled the familiar Belgian type
of bifurcated human animal. Later they thought of
Americans as only a little lower than the angels.
A beautiful letter of gratitude for the Christmas gifts
was printed by the children of Antwerp to send to their
American friends. The presses and even the type used,
were made by the famous printer, Christopher Plantin,
who lived in Antwerp three hundred and fifty years ago,
and the impressions were struck off in the press-rooms
of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, where Plantin printed
and Rubens chatted with him at his work. The seal of
the city of Antwerp, with the towers and roses and the
228 STARVING BELGIUM
severed hands of Druon Antigon, were set on the letter,
together with the seal of Christopher Plantin and the
round signatures of the children.
BELGIAN GRATITUDE
There followed lighter after lighter of gifts; food
which meant to the Belgian people not only health and
life, but sympathy and support; gifts which were touch-
ing evidence that their fate had not been forgotten in
the free world beyond the lines of barbed-wire and
bayonets. In the half year to come, all or part of the
cargoes of one hundred and two ships was gift goods,
and included in the number were entire gift-ships : five
from Canada, three from the Rockefeller Foundation in
New York, two from the New York Belgian Relief
Fund, two from Philadelphia and the State of Pennsyl-
vania, one from " the Northwestern Miller " group of
Minneapolis,1 and one from California. Publications
such as the Literary Digest and Christian Herald of
New York, solicited funds for the purchase of flour,
Governors and Premiers issued appeals, and Belgian
relief committees spontaneously organized in every state
of the American Union, Hawaii, all parts of the United
Kingdom, New South Wales, Canada, Victoria, India,
New Zealand, Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, South
Africa, the Argentine, China, Italy, Holland, and Spain.
1 See Appendix XI, page 341.
m c m jc
iBtlgian tttuu
itl) roe cotDtal tfmnte of tije
poor cfnlDrrn of atntDUcrp
to rtmr (nnd-ljeartrti coimaDto
of rlic iDutrrD *>tatc o for tDnr
nice Cftnftmaa presents;, s^ s^ s^ s^ s^ s^
Antwerp
Printed with the old
original types of
25 Dec. 1914.
Christophorus Plantinus
(1314-15*9).
CHRISTMAS 1914
Souvenir made by the children of Antwerp to send to the children of
America.
BELGIAN GRATITUDE 229
About one-half of the total contributions came from
the United States.
A flood of Belgian acknowledgments greeted these
gifts. The provincial offices of the Commission in Bel-
gium were stacked with beautiful souvenirs for the
American people. Silk banners, wrought metal boxes,
leather work, a magnificent carpet woven on the
famous looms at Westerloo and intended for the White
House in Washington, lace souvenirs of great value and
rare beauty, medallions symbolizing America's benevo-
lent protection, picture post-cards, and etchings were
among the gifts.
But the most touching and the most original souvenirs
were made of American flour sacks. No one knows who
first planned these gifts. They seemed to spring up spon-
taneously in all parts of Belgium as the simplest expres-
sion of the feelings of the people. To take the sacks,
emptied of their precious flour, and turn them into
souvenirs for the American donors was an inspiration,
and some of the results have been very beautiful.
Most of them are embroidered with designs in finest
needlework, and lettered " Homage to America,"
" Thanks to America," " Out of Gratitude to America,"
" Grateful Belgium to Kind America," " To the Saviour
of Belgium," or in simplest Flemish or French,
"Thanks." One of them shows Lady Columbia with a
Belgian baby in her lap and is inscribed, " The Protect-
ing Mother of Belgium."
230 STARVING BELGIUM
For to the Belgian people one thing seems very clear :
that they would have starved without the intervention of
America.
Their gratitude also is poured out to Canada, and to
Great Britain as a whole. The Belgians are intensely
loyal to their allies. Little British flags decorate many
of the souvenirs, and in one of the na'ive attempts to
bracket Canada and the United States as benefactors of
Belgium, a map has been drawn showing North America,
which is lettered "the United States," and South
America, which is lettered " Canada."
Charming gifts came to the delegates as unofficial rep-
resentatives of the American people. On the morning
of New Year's Day our butler presented us with a
pot of beautiful cyclamen and made us a little speech
explaining that the blossoms were not his gift only;
" they are from all the Belgian people to messieurs les
americains."
There was a sacramental blessing in such gifts, and
even when we laughed, as sometimes we did at the quaint-
ness or the crudeness of some of the offerings, our laugh-
ter was never far from tears.
Some of the most touching remembrances came from
children in all parts of the province. Every child in the
town of Tamise, for example, wrote a letter to America
and deposited it with me for transmission. All are in
BELGIAN GRATITUDE 231
Flemish, and the handwriting gives a fair indication of
the age of the authors. This one is by a little boy about
nine years old.
Good People of America:
If I had a flying machine I would fly to America to
thank the brave people there. I haven't one, so I
write a little letter, and I tell you that I shall pray very
much for you and never forget you.
JOZEF SEGLERAS.
This is by a boy of ten :
To Our Friends in America:
How glad I am that I can thank you out of my whole
heart, brave people of America, for all the things to eat
and the warm clothing that you sent us, for without it we
should certainly have died of hunger and cold. I want to
come to America myself to thank all the brave people.
GERALD VAN LANDEGHEM.
This is by a still younger child :
Dear America:
I thank you because you sent great big boats over the
great sea — cat-boats — rice, corn, bacon, stockings, clothing,
and shoes. I know that you like the little Belgians, and I
like you, too. ACHIEL MAES.
Saint Josef School, Cauwerburg, Tamise.
The letters are always childishly specific. A little boy
of ten or eleven writes:
Dear Americans:
It is war here. We have known hunger and need. We
have been fugitives. But, thank God, America helped us
232 STARVING BELGIUM
out of need by sending us clothing, beans, bacon, and bread.
We thank America and the Americans also, and every day
we pray Our Father for brave America.
ALFONS JANSSENS.
Here is another:
Brave People of America:
It is now war with us, and starvation has stood before
the door. Our friends of America sent us meal, flour,
bacon, and clothing, and we were freed from hunger and
cold. Brave people of America, be therefore a thousand
times thanked.
FRANS REYNIERS.
Letters from the little girls are equally charming and
naive. One of them runs:
Oh, dear Americans, I am still small. My words can-
not tell you very well how I want to thank you, but, dear
Americans, you must feel my heart.
I pray every day to the good God that He shall bless
your lives and that He shall spare you from war, hunger, and
all other horrors.
Take, then, loving and noble gentlemen, with my deep-
est feelings, the thanksgiving of my elder brothers and
sisters.
' A thankful heart,
GERARDINA VAN DER VOORDT.
The next child is about twelve, and has decorated her
letter with a very attractive border in the Belgian na-
tional colors. "Ik ben de kleinste van ons huis" she
writes, " en kan de meesie boterhammen eten " —
BELGIAN GRATITUDE 233
I am the littlest one in our house and can eat the most
bread-and-butter, and now that our bread is made of such
good flour I can hardly leave a piece of it alone. It is thanks
to you that I can eat so well, for your flour is delicious, and
in order to thank you I pray the Giver of All Good that He
will bless you. Your faithful,
PHILOTHEE SPEELMAN.
Another little girl about ten years old writes:
I often saw Mother weep when we came downstairs in
the morning, because she could not give us the bread we
asked for, because there was no flour. But you have dried
her tears with the good flour which you have sent.
" Drying tears with flour " may sound amusing, but
Julia Soevenirs was expressing a very serious feeling.
The next letter, from Jennie Ketels, speaks of the
method by which food imported by the Commission for
Relief in Belgium is sold to those able to pay for it, the
profit going to relieve the destitute.
It v/as so sad here. There was almost nothing more to
eat, but dear America has come to our help. You sent us
flour, rice, maize, and clothing, and in Tamise now there
is also a little shop where one can buy things to eat at the
usual prices, and that also is thanks to you, O good Amer-
icans. What would have become of our dear Belgian land
without you !
The following refers to the same little shop:
Business lies all still here, and so Father is without
work. And we should certainly have had to eat up the very
234 STARVING BELGIUM
last penny we had, if it were not that gracious America
came to our help. Thanks, good gentlemen, for the shop
opened here in Tamise, where we can buy our food at the
usual prices. I shall pray the Lord that He will bless you.
Your thankful,
CAROLINE BUMMEGHEN.
The next letter is a charming tribute:
I have often heard a little girl friend of mine speak of
an uncle who sent her many things from America, and I
was jealous. But now I have more than one uncle, and
they send me more than my friend's uncle did, for it is
thanks to you, dear uncles, that I can have a good slice of
bread every day.
MARIE MEERSMAN.
Suzanne de Gibber's letter is philosophical:
I have often heard people speak of great and rich
America, but with my childish understanding I could not
imagine that it was possible. Yet now that Mother tells
us every day, ' This bread, this bacon comes from our
friends in America,' I am overjoyed that your land is not
only rich, but that its inhabitants are kind-hearted and
lovingly disposed toward the tried Belgians.
There is more than a touch of Flemish humor in the
next letter:
If you could see me now you would not know me, for
I am dressed entirely in a little American suit of clothes.
Oh, what a warm, solid suit it is !
CARDINAL MERCIER'S PASTORAL LETTER 235
And here is a letter intended for the President of the
United States:
Highly Honored Mr. President:
Although I am still very young, I feel already that feel-
ing of thankfulness which we as Belgians owe to you,
highly honored Mr. President, because you have come to
our help in these dreary times. Without your help there
would certainly have been thousands of war victims, and so,
noble sir, I pray that God will bless you and all the noble
American people.
That is the wish of all the Belgian folk.
AUGUSTA VAN RAEMDONCK.
CARDINAL MERCIER'S PASTORAL LETTER
Belgium gave her word of honor to defend her inde-
pendence. She has kept her word.
The other Powers had agreed to protect and to respect
Belgian neutrality: Germany has broken her word; Eng-
land has been faithful to it.
These are the facts . . .
I consider it an obligation of my pastoral charge to
define to you your conscientious duties toward the Power
which has invaded our soil, and which, for the moment,
occupies the greater part of it.
This Power has no authority, and therefore in the depth
of your heart you should render it neither esteem, nor
attachment, nor respect.
The only legitimate power in Belgium is that which
belongs to our King, to his Government, to the Repre-
sentatives of the Nation. That alone is authority for us.
That alone has a right to our heart's affection, and to our
submission.
236 STARVING BELGIUM
These are the words I read in a little green-bound book-
let called " Patriotism and Endurance/* sent me about
Christmastime. Inside had been written in English in
a firm, delicate hand : "To Mr. Edward Eyre Hunt,
Cordial souvenir, * D. J. Card. Mercier, Archbishop of
Malines."
It was the famous New Year's pastoral. Its author
is the bravest man in Belgium.*
The Cardinal-Archbishop is like a Degas painting, if
Degas had pictured Cardinals instead of ballet-dancers.
He receives in a tiny whitewashed room furnished with
horsehair chairs, walnut-wood desk and table, and a
small coal stove. On the wall is a beautiful little image
of the Virgin, framed in glass. Through the windows
one looks into a dead garden where shells have plunged
and burst.
From the archiepiscopal closet one may wander
through long white halls and cloisters, formerly open to
wind and rain, I suspect, now closed and glassed from
the elements by a less heroic race. One may see the
salon which used to be a hall of state, where German
shells have torn through the roof and burst, leaving
jagged fragments in the tall mirrors, so that the glass
is splintered like ice under the hammer and flings
grotesque reflections and spars of light into the emptiness
overhead. The dais with its crimson hangings drops in
shreds; the hardwood floor is plowed and uprooted, and
1 See Appendix XII, page 341.
CARDINAL MERCIER'S PASTORAL LETTER 237
carven cherubim smile placidly from the wreckage. In
still another room huddle paintings of Archbishops of old :
saints and politicians, ascetics, and men of the world,
long forgotten now in spite of their imposing
Louis Quatorze wigs; and among them the familiar
faces of the Popes, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Bene-
dict XV.
The Cardinal seems preternaturally tall; six feet five,
I think. His face, thin, scholarly, ascetic, with sparse,
grayish-white hair above it, is bloodless, and his forehead
so white that one feels one looks on the naked bone.
His eyes are deep-set, the eyes of a man who sees a
great deal. There is a pleasantly humorous look about
the corners of the firm mouth, but the expression of his
face in conversation is that of a man who knows what
he thinks, measures what he says, and feels in advance
the exact effect of every remark he makes and of every
look he casts upon one. His black habit with the
cardinal-red braid, the heavy gold chain about his neck,
and the heavy gold cross at his breast, the wide violet
sash and the black-skirted cassock — all serve to empha-
size the old ivory whiteness and tooled artistry of the fine
face above them.
There is something feminine in the Cardinal's face, a
feminine deference and sympathy and comprehension
perhaps, but the effect which he makes on a caller is the
same as he makes on the world at large — that of a -finely
238 STARVING BELGIUM
poised, keenly intelligent, yet very gentle Prince of the
Church and shepherd of a nation.
The beginning of the war found the Catholic Party
in Belgium vacillating. Two or three of its leaders in
Parliament and at least one in the Cabinet counseled
against resistance to the invaders. When the German
armies overran eastern Belgium many priests ran away
from their flocks. Now religion in certain classes in
Belgium is hardly more than skin-deep, and the timid
patriotism of some of the Catholic authorities might well
have cost the Church its leadership if the Cardinal had not
taken his firm stand. The pastoral letter was good
politics and it was also a noble assertion of what was in
every liberty-loving heart and in the Cardinal's most
of all. In him conquered Belgium found a voice. She
recovered her pride and something of her old buoyancy
and resistance to the Germans became bolder. Belgium
had re-discovered her leaders.
On New Year's Sunday, 1915, every priest at the
mass read out the Cardinal's ringing challenge to the
nation. German soldiers were in the churches, but by
some mysterious means the letter had been distributed
to the priests without a word of it reaching the ears
of the authorities, and the astonished soldiers could
only listen in open-mouthed amazement. The Governor-
General appears to have been taken completely by sur-
prise. But after the first mass orders came swiftly
^ r
DESIRE JOSEPH CARDINAL MERCIER
CARDINAL MERCIER'S PASTORAL LETTER 239
from headquarters prohibiting further readings and de-
manding that every copy of the letter be surrendered to
the Germans. Soldiers forced their way into churches
and rectories and extorted the letter from the priests at
the bayonet's point; the readers were arrested for re-
calcitrance and haled to Kommandanturs; but in spite of
these measures, copies of the letter were scattered abroad,
and on the second Sunday, in churches in practically
every city in Belgium, priests read out the Cardinal's
sonorous words.
Meanwhile in Malines a dramatic struggle was on.
The archiepiscopal printer, Mr. Charles Dessain, Burgo-
master of Malines, was in England. His brother Fran-
cis, the acting Burgomaster, an Oxford graduate and a
prominent lawyer, printed the letter in his brother's book-
shop and had it delivered to the Cardinal's secretary.
On New Year's night Mr. Francis Dessain was awak-
ened at midnight by the rattle of gravel against his win-
dow. He looked out to see five muffled figures standing
in the street below, one of whom asked him in French
to come down and open the door. When the bolts had
been slipped back in the big Flemish door and an open-
ing appeared, wide enough for a man's arm, Mr. Des-
sain was suddenly seized, and a voice hissed : " Say a
word and you will be shot ! "
The door swung wide. In stepped a German in
civilian clothes and four others in the uniform of offi-
cers. Behind them came a squad of soldiers with 'fixed
240 STARVING BELGIUM
bayonets, who stood guard in the halls and court-
yard.
Mr. Dessain was taken into his library ; there the offi-
cers and he sat down, and a long examination began.
As it proceeded, Mr. Dessain' s eye fell on a printed
copy of the proscribed letter lying in plain view on his
desk. He felt an insane desire to conceal that particular
copy; an insane anxiety for fear the Germans would
discover it.
At two o'clock in the morning the examination ended.
Mr. Dessain was ordered to prison; but as he stood
up to leave the room, he unobtrusively reached for
the copy of the pastoral letter, covered it with another
book, and then marched off with his mind relieved of
a very heavy burden.
In the case of the Cardinal, of course, the problem
for the Germans was much more difficult than in the
case of the printer. They could not imprison a Prince
of the Church for fear of its evil effect on German
Catholic opinion; so Governor-General von Bissing
adopted the easier plan of sending an emissary to the
Cardinal to demand that the letter be suppressed in toto,
on the ground that it would incite to rebellion. The
Cardinal refused to recall the letter. The emissary then
submitted a set of propositions for the Cardinal's signa-
ture, meanwhile intimating to His Eminence that the
Governor-General wished him to remain in his palace for
PATRIOTIC CLOCKS 241
the present. This quasi-confinement lasted only for a
day, but it was the foundation for sensational rumors of
the Cardinal's imprisonment. Of course the Cardinal
signed none of the papers submitted to him.
The net result of this manceuvering was, as I have said,
that a few bold priests actually read the letter on two
Sundays in succession, that every man, woman, and child
in Belgium knew its contents, and that the outside world
buzzed with conjectures.
The Cardinal was quickly released, and the printer,
after three days in prison, was tried and sentenced to pay
a fine of five hundred marks.
PATRIOTIC CLOCKS
Patriotism was a cult. Symbols were marvelously
dear.1 Puzzles showing when the war would end or
prognosticating the date of the Kaiser's death were
reverenced to an extraordinary degree. Medallions of
King Albert, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Leopold, Duke of
Brabant, Prince Charles Theodore, Count of Flanders,
and the curly-headed Princess, Marie Jose, were treasured
like sacred relics. The Belgian flag was forbidden,
but black-yellow-and-red cord was used in wrapping
packages in the shops ; blouses were made in the national
colors; hats were trimmed with them; and little rosettes
of them were worn in all patriotic buttonholes.
1 See Appendix XII, page 341.
242 STARVING BELGIUM
Even the hands of a man's watch were an indication
of his patriotism. European Central time — the standard
time of the German Empire — was forced upon Belgium
by the military in order to avoid conflicts in time with
Berlin. The Belgians ordinarily keep Greenwich time —
a full hour earlier than German time — and they stub-
bornly refused to accept the new time, even with the
weight of the law behind it. Clocks on church towers
and in all public places were obliged to keep German
time, or those responsible for their upkeep were fined.
It was no excuse to plead that one's clock was an hour
slow: the Germans knew better.
The thing was comic — especially if one remembers
the time-worn charge against the Germans in 1 870*7 1 :
that they always stole French clocks! But it was not
so funny when one began to mix engagements. We
Americans kept Belgian time. If we arranged for a
German to call at one and a Belgian to call at twelve,
they arrived at exactly the same moment and glowered
at each other in the ante-room. The cathedral clock in
Antwerp furnishes time for the whole country-side. The
clock was obliged to record German time, of course ; but
when the city fathers sent out notices of municipal meet-
ings, they avoided the suggestion that the clock kept
unpatriotic time by stating that the meeting would be, say,
at two o'clock, " hour of the Tower." *
1 There was an Antwerp family whose patriotism was under
suspicion, because, it was rumored, they kept German time.
PATRIOTIC CLOCKS 243
Many clocks in public places were allowed to run down
as a patriotic protest.
But simple matters like these constantly bordered on
tragedy. On the night of December thirty-first at about
eleven o'clock Belgian time there was an outbreak of
shooting and yelling in the streets of Antwerp. People
fled to their cellars as they had done during the bombard-
ment three months before. The big guns in some of the
forts began booming and close at hand in the town echoed
volleys of musketry and isolated shots. It sounded as if
rioting had broken out and as if the Germans were quell-
ing it with tremendous uproar. Then down the streets
rolled the sudden blare of a band and a mighty chorus
of voices beginning " The Watch on the Rhine/' ... It
was midnight, German time, and the soldiers were cele-
brating the birth of a new year.
The tenacious patriotism which had been awakened by
the war is new in Belgian history. Local pride, local
traditions, local dialects and manners had been developed
at the expense of wider civic loyalties. The Belgian state
was not in existence before 1830; but the Belgian com-
mune has been in existence from time immemorial. It
had survived under an almost endless trampling of for-
eign armies. Spaniard, Austrian, French- and Dutch-
man marched over it with the centuries. So that the
commune, not the nation, was the Belgian fatherland.
But war, which translated their parochialism into
244 STARVING BELGIUM
patriotism, stole from the people their new-found coun-
try and their King, set foreigners to rule over them, and
thrust them impotently back again into their narrow com-
munes. The pity of it can never be told : the shame of it,
the broken pride, and the baffled longing. Ruined and
embittered, they turned for consolation inward upon
themselves, or to the Church.
One day, long after the event, there came a big, black-
bordered announcement that the nineteen-year-old son
of an Antwerp house had been killed at the Yser.
Later still his body was brought home for burial
through England and Holland — the only instance of the
sort which I recall. One of my Belgian friends described
the service.
" We are forbidden to have our flag, but a priest
brought it and laid it over the coffin, and in that naked
church, where we stood about him with our candles, it
seemed a sacrament of all the body and blood of
Belgium poured out in this war. I am not a believer,
but I wept.
" At the last the organ played the ' Brabangonne.' It
was heart-rending to hear our national anthem played so
and at such a time. I knew abject despair at that mo-
ment, and there was not one there who did not weep,
except him that was in the coffin."
Always on quiet nights, often in the daytime, we
heard the guns. The hard pulse-beat of cannon along
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 245
the Yser or on the North Sea filled all that one thought or
did. Hope flew like wild winds over Belgium if the
noise were unusually loud ; but it was hope mingled with
fear. The people of Antwerp often talked of what
seemed to them an inevitable thing — the second bombard-
ment of their city — when their rescuers, the British and
French, rolled back the German armies and came pound-
ing at the doors.
The wildest rumors seemed sane. Belgians could not
write to the front. They got no word from their army
and their loved ones, except such as spies and frontier-
runners brought them and spread by word of mouth, or
an occasional message dropped in a celluloid tube by an
Allied aeroplane, so the words of most encouragement
were spoken by the Yser guns.
" Did you hear the cannon last night, sir ? " the 'long-
shoremen often asked me on my visits of inspection to
the Commission docks and warehouses. " The English-
men will be here in a month ! " And every one turned
to his work more joyfully.
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
Only a common danger of appalling proportions could
weld the Belgians into a nation. Other forces than local
partiotism fought against national unity. Belgium had
been divided to an extent which Americans can hardly
credit. " The coming revolution " was in all men's
minds and on most men's tongue. Before King Albert's
246 STARVING BELGIUM
face the Socialists had cried, " Hurrah for the re-
public ! " Parliament and press were battlegrounds
where fundamental political principles met and fought:
Republicanism against Monarchy, Clericalism against
Anti-Clericalism, Flemings against French-speaking Wal-
loons, Socialism against Capitalism. Business, society,
every department of life, was divided and subdivided
into self-contained cliques. The bitterness of the
struggle and the disunion were almost unbelievable.
And even in the midst of war men could not be ex-
pected to lay aside fundamental principles. Only an
overwhelming calamity could arrest the internal struggle.
Not until all — politicians, populace, clergy, republicans,
and Clericals — found themselves confronted with the
physical problem of mere existence, could they forget
their quarrels. Before the necessity for food and cloth-
ing; before the naked, elemental needs of life, even pri-
mary principles went down.
But the process was not complete. Belgians still
feared and distrusted their fellow Belgians. War exag-
gerated certain of their suspicions, instead of allaying
them. In theory the Antwerp Relief Committee repre-
sented all classes and all interests, but some one group
had to be in control. Monsignor Cleynhens, doyen of
the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in his black cassock with
purple facings, sat beside Common Counselor Delan-
noy, once a dock laborer, now a Socialist leader.
Edouard Bunge, merchant prince; Senator Alfred Ryk-
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 247
mans, lawyer, Clerical, conservative; Jean Delia Faille,
proprietor; Alfred Cools, the Socialist Controller of
Antwerp (Echevin des Finances) ; Francis Dessain of
Malines, Oxford graduate, lawyer, and athletic church-
man who made Rugby football popular in Belgium ; the
great landed proprietor, young Count Charles de Merode
de Westerloo, whose ancestor had been offered the Bel-
gian crown by the top-hatted revolutionaries who freed
the land from William Fourth in 1830; octogenarian
Dr. Victor Desguin, alderman of Antwerp, and dean of
Liberal politicians; Walter Blaess, representative of
Lloyd's ; Emmanuel Montens, member of the Permanent
Deputation of the Provincial Council; Jakob Smits,
artist, genre painter and etcher, with the temperament
proper to his high calling,11 — such men as these were
members of the Committee presided over by the Liberal
Deputy, Louis Franck.
Such .a machine could not run smoothly from the
start. There was a period of necessary readjustment and
even of revolt, in which the role of the Americans was
to fight for independence from political influence and
for administrative unity.
At the first meeting of the Provincial Committee a
list of proposed members, whose names of course meant
nothing to me, was submitted and approved. The first
circular letter to the communes contained a copy of this
1 See Appendix XIV, page 342.
248 STARVING BELGIUM
list. The nominees were notable citizens of the three
arrondissements — Antwerp, Turnhout, and Malines.
A week later four gentlemen from the arrondissement
of Turnhout came into my private office to protest
against inclusion in the Antwerp provincial organization.
They told me that they wished to deal with Brussels and
not with Antwerp. They would be delighted to deal
with me personally, or through the Brussels Committee;
but they did not wish to deal through the Antwerp Com-
mittee.
At the second meeting the trouble came to a head.
There was an exciting moment when all the Turnhout
delegates were on their feet at once, speaking Flemish
instead of French, as they usually did when much ex-
cited, protesting that they had never seen the circular ad-
dressed to the communes, an answer to which was re-
quired on the following day, and adding that they were
appealing to Brussels for complete separation from Ant-
werp.
I protested vigorously against division. They pa-
tiently explained again that they would be delighted to
deal directly with the kind Americans, but that they did
not wish to deal with them through the Antwerp Com-
mittee. One of the gentlemen wept in the excess of his
feelings, and choruses of recriminations, which I could
not understand, were exchanged between the groups.
When had Antwerp, rich and pious in the Middle Ages
— now subject to tradesmen and freemasons — when had
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 249
it been generous to Turnhout? Or when had Turnhout,
rustic, old-fashioned, and Clerical, trusted the merchants
of Antwerp?
I count it one of the miracles of our work that on this
foundation we built a solid, durable relief organization.
Turnhout had not yet received an ounce of American
foodstuffs and had not fathomed the purpose of the
American Commission. It looked on us as an associa-
tion of benevolent grain-dealers, selling flour to a body
of Antwerp business men, who, in turn, would resell it
to the Turnhout delegation, of course at a profit to them-
selves !
I had not the least intention of permitting a division
of the province. But the difficulties of communication
were still so great that Brussels ratified the secession of
Turnhout before my reports reached them. The division
appealed to them as logical, since the agglomeration of
Brussels was treated as a separate organism in the relief
work ; another committee having been created for the re-
mainder of the province of Brabant. But more as a
favor to me than for any sounder reason, Brussels con-
sented to reverse this judgment, and on January first they
sent me a fourth assistant, Richard Harvey Simpson,
" Rhodester " like the rest, especially to take charge of
the arrondissement of Turnhout.
The arrondissement of Malines was restive for much
the same reasons as Turnhout. The city of Antwerp
had shipped them no food from its stores, acting-
250 STARVING BELGIUM
Burgomaster Francis Dessain had borrowed food
from the German authorities much as the Jews "bor-
rowed" from the Egyptians before the crossing of
the Red Sea, and had even appropriated a lighter of
commission grain en route to Brussels, rather than see
his townspeople without bread. Conditions were most
unsatisfactory, but for the sake of harmony the Malines
delegates pledged themselves to work with the Antwerp
organization, and Oliver C. Carmichael was assigned to
duty as delegate for the arrondissement committee of
Malines.
There was good reason for Antwerp to be in control.
The city had been for a month and a half the capital of
Belgium after the fall of Brussels. Cash, credit, and food
were at her command. She was the sole support of the
poorer communities about her, especially the seventy-
seven communes lying inside the rings of fortifications.
Up to the time that I became delegate for the fortress
and province, every bit of relief which had been given
out had been due to the generosity of the municipality
of Antwerp, and had been apportioned through its
municipal organizations.1
Relief, then, was a municipal matter from the point of
view of the Antwerp authorities. These authorities
were party men. They belonged to the Liberal or So-
cialist party. No Catholics were among them. With a
fine spirit of patriotism they had shared with their neigh-
1 See Appendix XV, page 343.
INTERNAL CONFLICTS 251
bor communes what food and money the municipality
controlled, but they saw no reason why they should not
claim credit for their generosity, or why they should sur-
render their favored position at the center of supplies
when food began to come from America instead of the
municipal warehouses.
INTERNAL CONFLICTS
As American delegate I was pledged to a different
point of view.
The work we were inaugurating touched one million
people and one hundred and sixty-five communes. It
required a meticulous system of distribution and control,
so that there should not be one ounce of waste or mis-
use. Business men with long experience in handling
big business affairs alone could manage such a structure
as we planned, so that it was obvious from the start
that the Antwerp Provincial Relief Committee must be
divorced from the Antwerp Town Hall and the group
of party men who had so ably ministered to the wants
lying close at hand.
The preliminaries to the divorce were comical. Brans-
comb, who was just nineteen, had been designated to act
as delegate for the city. Almost his first duty was to
remonstrate with the local committee regarding their
reports. Standing in the midst of half the aldermen and
politicians of the greatest of Flemish cities, Branscomb
quietly but insistently drawled, " We cannot and we will
252 STARVING BELGIUM
not send another such report as this to Brussels. Re-
ports must have our signature as American delegates.
We will not give our signatures to tardy and un-business-
like reports."
The Controller of Antwerp whimsically remarked to
one of his friends, " I have been accustomed to handle
millions of francs every day, and now these young
Americans come and ask me what became of such-and-
such a bag of flour last week ! "
None of us was out of his twenties. We were beard-
less boys in the assemblies of our elders, but young or
old we were equal participators in a thrilling undertaking,
and we intended to do our part. Our Belgian co-
workers were as eager as we to have the work done ex-
peditiously and well, but while they were volunteers, like
ourselves, with temporary powers and prerogatives, they
were not disinterested aliens but responsible citizens, and
they dared not use their authority as if it were per-
manent. They could not make enemies and sleep sweetly
o' nights into the bargain, so we borrowed their worries
and took the initiative, even when it seemed rightly to be-
long to the Belgians and when a count of noses would
have given us a Belgian majority.
In this as in other matters our neutrality was no nega-
tive thing. It was positive, aggressive, and self-confident.
In an open meeting of the Provincial Committee and
with no previous notice to the members, I transferred
INTERNAL CONFLICTS 253
the work of provisioning for the entire arrondissement
of Antwerp from the Town Hall to a suite of rooms in
the National Bank, kindly vacated for us by Mr. Ferdi-
nand Carlier, the director of the bank, and I designated
a new delegate, Thomas O. Connett, to serve as repre-
sentative for the arrondissement of Antwerp, with in-
structions to arrange immediately for a census of all
bread and flour consumers in the district. The transfer
was completed in four days. Such precipitate action ap-
palled some of our supporters in the Committee, but
even at some cost to the pride and prestige of the local
managers we were warmly backed, and those who first
opposed learned later to applaud. " Time has shown
that you were right and that we were wrong," was the
generous summary of Mr. Louis Franck, months after
our little revolution was accomplished.
Connett was a quiet, unobtrusive young Cambridge
student, about twenty-two years old. In three weeks
time, with the co-operation of Mr. Ferdinand Carlier
and the staff of bank clerks, he had card-indexed the
city of Antwerp and reorganized the system of control
over food distributions with a saving of about one-fifth
of the supplies.
The work of the Commission for Relief in Belgium
and the National Relief Committee brought together in
a community like Antwerp groups which had never
known each other except as the most bitter rivals. This
254 STARVING BELGIUM
was often called to my attention. It gave me, as time
went on and as I saw more deeply into the situation
than I could possibly do at the 'beginning, a chance to
understand and to admire the splendid spirit of prac-
tically all who worked with us. It was too much to ex-
pect men to give up at a stroke the animosities and con-
flicts of years. Politics was played under our very noses.
But, perhaps for the first time in Belgium, there was a
definite feeling of the pettiness of politics in the face of
national calamity. The best men in every part of the
province slaved at the work of relief. Nearly three
thousand served on our communal committees in Ant-
werp, and by the simple rule that all parties and cliques
should be actively represented, the Commission and the
National Relief Committee managed to bring together
and to keep together representatives of the best in all.
Thus the Turnhout revolt was put down without blood-
shed, and the gentlemen of the Turnhout arrondisse-
ment committee were soon among the most loyal of
our coadjutors; the arrondissement of Malines worked
splendidly, under the leadership of Cardinal Mercier and
Messrs. Francis Dessain and Dr. Paul Lamborelle; the
arrondissement of Antwerp was reorganized and gal-
vanized into activity, and, for the Commission, each
arrondissement was represented by one or more Ameri-
can delegates.1
1 See Appendix XVI, page 344, and Appendix XVII, page 345.
THE WAESLAND 255
THE WAESLAND
Brussels now added to our charge a part of the
province of East Flanders, called in Flemish Waes-
land, and in French le pay de Waes. It was an ar-
rondissement lying on the left bank of the Scheldt north-
east of Ghent. Seventy years ago it was a tract of sandy
moorland; just before the war it was one of the most
productive and most highly cultivated regions in Bel-
gium with an agricultural population of more than
five hundred to the square mile. Its capital, Saint
Nicolas, had a population of more than thirty-five
thousand.
This teritory, belonging to the Provincial Committee
at Ghent, was easy of access from Antwerp, but was a
burden to the American delegates in Ghent, since their
entire attention was directed toward the needy regions
nearer the fighting-lines. I offered to assume charge
of the Waesland for the Provincial Committee of
East Flanders, but without adding it to the administra-
tion of the Belgian Committee of Antwerp. There was
an excellent mill at Tamise; shipments from Rotterdam
could go directly to Tamise, and from there be forwarded
by light railway or wagon to Saint Nicolas.
This arrangement our Brussels office and the National
Committee ratified, and a fifth delegate to the Antwerp
staff, W. W. Stratton— W. W. Flint had returned to
Oxford — came to take charge of the Waesland work.
256 STARVING BELGIUM
Stratton was a young " Rhodester " from the State of
Utah; tirelessly energetic and intelligent.
The Waesland brought with it peculiar difficulties,
since it lay in a part of Belgium outside the control of
Governor-General von Bissing. It required special passes
for travel, special rules for administration, and some-
times special supplies.
The Waesland also brought special thrills. Riding to
Ghent from Antwerp was almost as exciting as the
famous ride from Ghent to Aix which Browning
imagined and sung. Once it brought me the dubious
honor of the German " goose-step."
I fancy I am the only civilian, neutral or belligerent,
for whom the " goose-step " has been done since the war
began. It was a sadly misplaced parade-march. I
was returning from Ghent to Antwerp in a closed limou-
sine when an open automobile full of German officers
cut across our bows at the outskirts of a Waesland town
called Lokeren. My automobile had created a stir in the
Etap pen-Inspection, because it was the only car per-
mitted to a civilian, with the single exception of the car
belonging to the American Consul-General and Vice-Con-
sul in Ghent. The officers stared at me in astonishment
as they passed. Their car then rolled along about fifty
feet ahead, when suddenly up the street appeared a de-
tachment of troops. Far away I heard a gruff, " Auf! "
as the soldiers came face to face with the car full of
officers, and at the command all the troops began the
THE WAESLAND 257
" goose-step," vigorously smacking the cobble-stones as
they strode past the car.
Then the officer in command of the detachment caught
sight of my car. " A limousine following a large car
filled with officers!" he must have thought. "The
Kaiser or the Crown Prince, nichtf " There came a sec-
ond " AUF! ! !" considerably louder than the first, and
the whole company paraded by, with stiff necks, heads
at right angles, and the pavement volleying like a storm.
In Ghent, as in Antwerp, few young men were to be
seen. Many of those who had stayed until the city was
occupied by the Germans had later fled over the frontier,
afraid lest they should be impressed into the army and
sent to fight the Russians. No part of the city had been
harmed ; it had never been bombarded, or even besieged,
and this in part was due to Burgomaster Braun.
The Burgomaster of Ghent is the son of a German
school-teacher, but a thoroughgoing Belgian. When the
invaders drew near he marched out in medieval fashion
to meet them, and addressed the German general at the
head of his troops.
" General," he said, speaking deliberately in French,
" I do not come to you, as formerly the Burgomaster of
Ghent came to the Emperor Charles Fifth, clad only in a
shirt and with a rope about my neck! No, General, I
come before you as a Belgian patriot." And the general
spared him and his city.
258 STARVING BELGIUM
Most of us have read many times in Belgian history
of citizens compelled to meet their conquerors, clad only
in their shirts and with a halter about their necks.
" Only in their shirts " sounds immodest, until you see
and wear a Belgian shirt. The garment is especially de-
signed to meet the needs of just such historical occasions
as the surrender of Ghent to the Emperor Charles. It has,
even today, long skirts which cover everything almost as
far down as the ankles, in spite of a tentative slit effect
which crawls perhaps as high as the knees. You would
feel no hesitation at being presented at court or in con-
ducting divine service in such a modest dress. Never-
theless we Americans sawed off the skirts with knives
and scissors, until the happy day when Simpson discov-
ered Leyendecker shirts and Arrow collars in a shop
on the Rempart Kipdorp.
A BELGIAN CO-OPERATIVE
By February first, the operations of the Commission
and the National Relief Committee had grown enor-
mously. Arrivals from Rotterdam amounted to about
eight thousand tons a month.1 If one figures that each
province should have local supplies for at least fifteen
days in stock or en route, this means three thousand to
twenty thousand tons of merchandise, which, at an aver-
age price of four hundred francs a ton, totals from one
million to eight million francs. Thus these sums were im-
1 See Appendix XVIII, page 345.
A BELGIAN CO-OPERATIVE 259
mobilized, and the National Committee bore the expense.
Such a burden had to be adjusted. The financial guaran-
tees covering merchandise for the province of Antwerp
had at first been assumed by the city, but that was at the
very beginning when arrivals were small. The prov-
inces of Hainaut, Luxembourg, Liege, Namur, East
Flanders, and Limbourg, not having city funds available,
had formed co-operative societies to fund the work of
the Provincial Committees. The National Committee
insisted that Antwerp do the same.
Capital was desirable from several points of view.
Some of the provinces had stocks of agricultural prod-
uce, such as potatoes, which were much needed in other
parts of the country. Antwerp possessed certain stores
which the Germans might be persuaded to release to
the relief committees for Belgian consumption, and for
these inter-provincial trades capital was required. The
Committees were obliged, also, to buy in the open market
salt, fuel, and other things not imported by the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium.1
The Provincial Committee decided to transform its
provisioning department into a co-operative society with
a minimum capital of twelve million francs.2
The subscribers to the new co-operative were the city
of Antwerp, the province of Antwerp, and forty-five
banks, commercial houses, or individual groups of sub-
1 See Appendix XIX, page 347.
2 See Appendix XX, page 347.
26o STARVING BELGIUM
scribers. The cooperative had for its principal object
" the feeding of the civil population of the province of
Antwerp by purchase and sale of cereals, of foodstuffs,
and generally of all things necessary or useful to human
life.
" It has also for its purpose the feeding of the live-
stock of the province of Antwerp by the purchase and
sale of grain, oil-cakes, and other forage, and generally
of all things necessary and useful to animal life."
And included in its charter were the following provi-
sions :
" It shall have a life of five years from the present
date, but it may be dissolved before that time by a gen-
eral assembly of a majority of its associates, but only
after the conclusion of peace. A member is not per-
mitted to withdraw before the dissolution of the co-op-
erative. Of the net profits, after the constitution of a
reserve, which the council shall determine, there shall
be set aside an annual interest of three per cent on the
capital to the profit of the associates, and the balance
. . . shall be credited to the benevolent department of
the Provincial Relief Committee of the province of
Antwerp." l
Among the individual subscribers to this excellent or-
ganization was Cardinal Mercier, whose power of at-
1 Belgian law requires that co-operative societies shall have a
capital, shall pay a dividend, and shall be constituted for a limited
period of years, not exceeding thirty, with the power, however,
of renewal.
A BELGIAN CO-OPERATIVE 261
torney I held and whom I represented in the articles of
incorporation.
The executive committee of the co-operative acted as
executive committee of the provisioning department of
the Provincial Committee, and they and their staff of
clerks were housed in offices adjoining those of the Com-
mission delegates.
By the creation of the co-operative society we saw our
labors at provincial headquarters safe on the highway
to success. A purely commercial management replaced
the quasi-political organization of the earlier days, and
the commercial department was definitely separated from
the Town Hall and lodged with us in a new bank build-
ing at 2 Marche aux Grains, finished just before the out-
break of the war, and given rent-free to the Commission
and the Provincial Committee by Mr. Edouard Bunge.
We now desired that the benevolent department of the
Provincial Committee be housed with us, and after some
negotiations, it, too, was transferred from the Town Hall
and placed in offices adjacent to ours.
The days of disunion and divided efforts thus passed
away from Antwerp. The very name of the bank where
we were housed was a good omen for the future. It
was "la banque de r Union anuersoise" — The Bank of
the Union of Antwerp.
262 STARVING BELGIUM
BREATHING SPELLS
The conditions of war soon grow to seem normal, but
there is an emotional and physical strain about them
which eats at one's heart. We Americans were very busy
and we were happy. On the Antwerp staff — from time
to time the members shifted, some going back to Oxford
or to America, others to stations in other parts of Bel-
gium or northern France — were B. H. Branscomb, O. C.
Carmichael, R. H. Simpson, W. W. Flint, W. W. Strat-
ton, T. O. Connett, Gardner Richardson, G. H. Stockton,
and J. B. Van Schaick. Our normal number was five.
We lived in a quiet Antwerp mansion, given us by our
friend, Mr. Edouard Bunge, vice-president of the Provin-
cial Committee. From the windows we overlooked a
little park, and the capped, thoughtful statue of the
artist Quinten Metseys. The lintel of our doorway was
gashed, where an incendiary shell, striking in the street,
had ricochetted and burst. Until late in the spring,
when a special censorship for the Commission members
was arranged with the Germans, we received no letters
or newspapers from any one outside of Belgium. We
had no new books. We knew little about the progress of
the war. Home was almost a myth.
We patrolled the province in our automobiles; at-
tended committee meetings — there were one hundred and
seventy of these meetings each week, so our range of
choice was large — ; carried on extensive correspondence
EDOUARD BUNGE
BREATHING SPELLS 263
in four languages ; compiled exhaustive reports on official
matters, and held the scales of justice as level as we
could in a country which reeled and slipped in the bloody
path of war.
Breathing spells were not many, and we sometimes
longed for escape from Belgium as a convict longs to
break prison. At last Mr. Hoover arranged a series
of vacations for delegates, because the men could not
stay long in the work and remain well in body and spirit.
Crossing the border to Holland was like a spiritual ex-
perience. The sudden sense of freedom was as strange
and real as mountain air after a long stay in the city, and
one's heart sang like a lark, merely to be quit of Bel-
gium. On my first visit to Holland a crowd of Dutch
children in a frontier village screamed at the motor-car
and flung their caps under it, as children do the world
over, except in Belgium. It was a bitter reminder
of the repression and fear in the little land behind me;
a fear and repression which affected even the casual
visitor.
For we had visitors in Antwerp — journalists and
others — but these visitors invariably hurried over the
border at the first opportunity. We laughed about it,
but we understood. Belgium was like a military prison
and an asylum for the insane, rolled into one. Always,
just under the surface of life, one felt the tearless, voice-
less, tragic resistance of an unconquerable people.
264 STARVING BELGIUM
Yet the camaraderie of the Commission supplied many
lacks. When we spent the night in Brussels, Amos D.
Johnson's house at 12 Galerie de Waterloo roared with
our fun and the recitation of each others' Odysseys : how
Bowdin and Gaylor refused to salute the German colonel
at Longwy and how the colonel almost died of apoplexy
in consequence; how Robinson Smith, translator of Don
Quixote, gently but firmly refused a gold watch tendered
him by the Provincial Committee of Hainaut, until the
Committee had adopted his scheme of bread locaux com-
munaux; how Carstairs was soon to marry a Belgian
girl, and how other delegates were suspected of being
matrimonially minded; how Curtis cursed the German
sentry, never dreaming he knew English, and was
answered in perfect Bostonese, " Same to you, old fel-
low ! " ; how Senor Bulle burst into inextinguishable
laughter at Hugh Gibson's telling of the soda-fountain
joke; how somebody tried to ram a Zeppelin shed, and
should have been shot in consequence; of Sperry's bon
mot, "There isn't one of these foreign countries, but
what, if you live in it long enough, it'll ' get your goat ' " ;
of one of our fellow-citizens who said to Cardinal Mer-
cier, "You're a Catholic, ain't you? ... Well, I'm
a Presbyterian myself ; but I ain't got no prejudices " ;
of tugs and lighters, calories, manquants, baches, af-
fiches, rations, batelliers, connaissements, excedants,
chemins de fer vidnaux, francs, marks, pounds sterling,
and florins, the competence or incompetence of our
BREATHING SPELLS 265
respective chauffeurs and automobiles, and the greatness
of Hoover.
It was a time of joy and sorrow. Isolated and broken-
hearted, the Belgians were starving for sympathy as well
as for food. There was something almost ritualistic
in the reiteration of their gratitude. Never once were
they a nation of beggars receiving charity; they were
self-respecting fellow-beings receiving merited help
from friends. There was no mendicant whine in
the words, " You have saved our lives. Without you,
what would have become of us and our poor Belgium ? "
They translated our flour and beans and bacon into
brotherhood, human solidarity, and mutual helpfulness.
These were the compensations. But the strain of the
work endured. I used to go to the magnificent old
Premonstratensian Abbey of Tongerloo to try to for-
get everyday affairs. The avenues of venerable linden
trees, the gaunt halls, the white-gowned canons and
gray-gowned acolytes and novices, the sanctity and re-
pose of the place, were irresistibly soothing. But I
went to Tongerloo really to see Father Pat — another
name for Canon Patrick McGuire — a wilderness of soft
white beard with twinkling Irish eyes above it, nature's
tonsure, and a smile like a saint's. Nine years Father
Pat had spent on a mission in the Belgian Congo. " But
you get nervous there," he said. " It's terrible nervous
work, keeping all the blackies married to their own
266 STARVING BELGIUM
wives. You get them all straightened out, married off
one by one, and then your boys go off with other boys'
wives, and you have it all to do over again !
" Now we are here and you are here, working together
for Belgium. God's blessing on America for this great
work," he said, with the instinctive piety one met with so
often in Belgium. " It would be a delight to the Ameri-
cans to go round the little villages here about Tongerloo,
and see every day how every child has his little bowl
of soup and a little bit of bread, and no sickness, no
starvation — not yet, at any rate. If only you can keep
it up; if only you can work, work, work until the war
is over ! A bowl of soup and a bit of bread, and they'll
all be alive when King Albert comes home."
A pleasant feeling of the transitory nature of war al-
ways came over me in Tongerloo. When the monks
spoke of war they usually referred to the French Revolu-
tion, because in the Revolution their monastery had been
burned by the iconoclasts and the whole order had been
exiled. In August, 1914, the Belgian Prince de Ligne
was shot to death near Tongerloo in an armored motor-
car; Norbertian monks had been heroic helpers when
the villages in their neighborhood were sacked or burned ;
but their minds lived in great leaps of time, in centuries
instead of years, and one shared their immortality
when one stopped in the cloisters of Tongerloo and
Averbode.
BREATHING SPELLS 267
It would be too long, though all too short a story,
to tell of the hospitality and the idyllic hours at Hoog-
boom, Cappellen, Calixberghe, Donck, Tongerloo, Aver-
bode, Malines, Saint Leonarts, Tamise, and Braeschat,
and the friends who opened their houses and hearts
to " the Americans." Work pressed constantly to be
done. The war could hardly be forgotten for a
moment. The thunder of the guns was always in our
ears.
One night at Hoogboom I ran out of the chateau for
a lonely, happy, night walk. The cool spring air was
marvelously clear and the new beech leaves were like
lattice-work against the blue-black sky. Rhododendrons
and azaleas were in blossom, hidden in the dusk like
tropical birds. The thrilling smells of turned earth and
young growing things were in my nostrils. A lake be-
hind the castle lay mirror-still, and I stopped beside
it, listening to the guns — the everlasting guns.
Seventy-five miles away, along the Yser, in the spring
dusk, men were killing and being killed. Each ex-
plosion could be heard : a toneless stab in one's head, not
like a sound, but like a wound; a thrust that twisted
and tortured into one's consciousness and could not be
forgotten.
But from across the lake, from the depths of a little
wood came a new sound. Cannon-thunder was a com-
monplace to us. If nights were quiet we heard it even in
the heart of a city like Antwerp; we heard it every Sun-
268 STARVING BELGIUM
day in the country. The new sound was a bird voice.
The first nightingale of the year had begun to sing,
clamorous and violent and glad. It rioted in music,
and then at last the song sank gurgling into silence.
And again came the remorseless drumming of the
Yser guns.
CHAPTER VI
THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
A GREAT FINANCIER
THE weekly meeting of the members of the National
Relief Committee are held in Brussels in a beautiful
parlor belonging to the Societe Generate de Belgique
pour favoriser I'industrie nationale, at number 3 Mon-
tagne du Pare — a parlor all cream and gold, with an
immense glass candelabrum hanging from the ceiling.
Below is a T-shaped table covered with green baize. The
baize is old and gray, and looks as if it might have a
history. Tall, musical rosewood clocks stand on either
side of the wide doors. There are large mirrors at
the ends of the room, and white marble busts of King
Albert and Queen Elizabeth coolly watch the proceed-
ings. On the walls hang paintings of the two former
Belgian kings: Leopold First in coronation dress; old
Leopold Second in general's uniform with a double tier
of orders showing under his white beard.
There is a suggestion of the French Revolutionary
period about the room. It is decorated in the style
of the Empire, but one feels that avatars of sans-
269
27o THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
culottes may lurk behind the upholstered chairs, and
that one breathes an atmosphere of conspiracy and sub-
terranean activity.
The members gather every Thursday. They are the
notable citizens of Belgium. With one or two excep-
tions there are no young men, and graybeards and bald
pates are greatly in the majority.
The meetings bring together a strange mixture of
classes and physiognomies. Grouped about the long
green table are Paul van Hoegaerden, the vigorous,
vociferous president of the Liege Provincial Committee,
with a trick of pulling at his collar as if its tightness im-
peded the flow of his harsh, metallic words ; his able son
Jacques, secretary of the Liege Committee, one of the
few younger men in the National Committee ; statuesque
Baron Albert d'Huart, president of the Namur Com-
mittee; Fulgence Masson, vice-president of the Hainaut
Committee, wise in counsel, quick in action, his round
face humorous as a clown's; Louis Franck, president of
the Antwerp Committee, like an etching by Felicien Rops,
with black Assyrian beard and sparse hair, piercing eye
and clean profile, always smiling his enigmatic, optimistic
smile ; attenuated Count Jean de Merode, Grand Marshal
of King Albert's Court, vice-president of the Provincial
Committee of Brabant; gigantic Constant Heynderyckx,
alderman of Ghent; small, pliant Jean de Hemptinne,
also of Ghent; Georges Eeckhout, professor at Ghent
University; the dark, foreign, languid figure of Raoul
A GREAT FINANCIER 271
Warocque, Burgomaster of Morlanwelz, who lives at
Mariemont with kangaroos and Buddhas; Emmanuel
Janssen, head of the benevolent department for the
whole country, gently smiling on all; modest Louis
Solvay; the Michel Angelo profile of Michel Levie,
president of the light railways of Belgium (la Societe
Nationale des Chemins de fer vicinaux) ; Senator Em-
manuel Tibbaut, head of the agricultural department;
quiet, efficient Chevalier de Wouters d'Oplinter; and
executive secretary F. van Bree, swarthy as the pirate
Black Beard.1
Then there enters the crowded room the burly headed,
heavy-set chairman of the Committee, Mr. Emile
Francqui. He seats himself, raps on the table for
quiet, and without waiting for it, begins to chant the order
of the day, his heavy Bismarckian head sunk forward,
his voice running like a millrace.
"What time is it?" a Belgian friend asked Mr.
Francqui near the end of an important business con-
ference.
" Half-past three."
" Francqui, let me see your watch ! " . . .
" I knew," the friend explained, laughing, " that if
Francqui were getting the better of me he would want
to continue the discussion, so he would put the time
about a quarter of an hour ahead. If he thought I was
1 See Apendix XXI, page 348.
272 THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
getting the better of him, he would have told me it was
half an hour later. So I asked to see his watch." . . .
Mr. Francqui is a type familiar to Americans: a
big-business man in the prime of life, self-made, brusque,
bourgeois, sometimes intolerably rude, but always effi-
cient, and the man of the hour in Belgian financial affairs.
He resembles an American trust magnate, with more than
a spice of Gallic salt in his composition. He has no small
ambitions, no cheap ideas of glory, and no sentimentality
or cant. As director of the Societe Generate de Belgique
— a great banking institution, founded in 1822 with an
original capital of fifty million francs — he is one of the
foremost financial figures in Belgium, and his share in
the inauguration of the work of the Commission and the
National Relief Committee has placed in his hands the
intricate operations of financing the Belgian committees.
In the composition of the great financial groups which
are the backbone of the National Committee, are Mr.
Jean Jadot, governor of the Societe Generate, vice-presi-
dent of the National Committee, Mr. L. van der Rest,
vice-governor of the National Bank of Belgium and vice-
president of the Committee, and Mr. Ernest Solvay,
president of the famous Solvay Process Company and
president of the Committee; but to Mr. Francqui has
been left the active charge of the work of erecting a
financial substructure for the whole organization of
relief.
Great financiers are usually dictators, and Mr. Franc-
HARD CASH 273
qui is no exception to the rule. But the situation seems
to call for a dictator. The weekly meetings of the Na-
tional Committee are stage-plays purely. No Germans
are present, but the sense of oppression is always there,
and to break it the assembly seems to take on an attitude
of mock-seriousness and to shoulder its deliberations
lightly.
So Mr. Francqui does his real work alone. The order
of the day which he reads at each meeting so swiftly
and so humorously, consists of information from the
Commission for Relief in Belgium, instructions to the
Provincial Committees, notifications of rules imposed
through the Minister-patrons by the German authorities,
arrivals in Rotterdam and shipments en route to the
provinces, subsidies allowed to the various charitable de-
partments of the committees, a financial statement for
the week, and a report and instructions from the agri-
cultural department. But the real work goes on behind
the scenes, and the committeemen are not sorry to have
it so.
HARD CASH
Belgian finance presents complex problems. A mora-
torium was declared at the start of the war. The
value of notes held by the National Bank and affected
by the moratorium reached one thousand million francs.
As late as April first, 1915, only about one-fourth of this
sum, or two hundred and fifty million francs, ha'd been
274 THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
paid, and these by the more solvent or less affected
debtors, among whom were many Belgian banks.
On top of all this internal insolvency, the Germans on
December tenth levied on Belgium a contribution of war
of forty million francs per month.1
At the outbreak of the war Belgian currency had al-
most disappeared. Many communes were so harassed
that they issued emergency currency of their own, good
only in the communal limits. At least seventy per cent
of the important towns and villages of Belgium and
northern France were forced to this expedient, and
struck off on the municipal printing-presses " shin-plas-
ter" bills for one franc, fifty centimes, twenty-five
centimes, or ten centimes; and at least one of them, the
commune of Saint Nicolas in East Flanders, struck a
paper bill for five centimes — about one cent in American
money. These bills had nothing but the credit of the
municipality to back them, and had no value outside of
the commune issuing them. Three months after the end
of the war, or on January first, 1915, they were pay-
able at the municipal till. Of course they were valuable
only for small retail trade.
Such currency as reappeared after recovery from the
first shock of terror at the beginning of the war, disap-
peared again as the Germans overran Belgium. Silver
and small nickel coins, along with the paper issued by
the National Bank, were hidden away in safe places;
1 See Appendix XXII, page 349.
HARD CASH 275
gold had been sent for safe keeping into Holland or
England; and the National Bank of Belgium was thus
in no position to carry on its normal function of regulat-
ing the currency of the country, even if the Germans had
been willing to allow it to do so. As it was, the military
authorities took from the bank its privilege of issuing
paper money, but in other respects interfered with the
National Bank no more than with private institutions.
Meanwhile German paper and nickel coins — five mark,
two mark, one mark bills, and pfennigs — began to circu-
late in Belgium, and the tradespeople were compelled by
military proclamations to accept the money of the in-
vaders at a fixed ratio to the Belgian franc.
To meet the extraordinary situation of the national
currency, the Societe Generate in March, 1915, six
months after the outbreak of war, and with the sanction
of the German authorities, resorted to what is probably
an unparalleled financial device. It issued a paper cur-
rency, backed solely by its private credit and the credit
of its associated banks, redeemable three months after
peace is signed by an equivalent bill of the Belgian Na-
tional Bank; and this extraordinary currency was suc-
cessfully circulated and bears a definite exchange ratio
to the German mark and the Belgian franc formerly
issued by the National Bank.1
1 To understand the situation one may imagine the United
States of America blockaded on both oceans, with a Mexican army
in charge of our financial affairs. In such a case, since the invaders
276 THE BELGIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
The earlier bills of the Societe Generate, issued in
March, 1915, bore the portrait of Queen Caroline, the
wife of Leopold First. Later issues of bills bore the head
of Rubens, and it was commonly believed in Belgium that
this was because the Germans objected to the picture of
a Belgian queen, even if that queen had been dead for
half a century.
With these financial steps the National Relief Com-
mittee had nothing to do, but the steps themselves were
very important in the relief work. In addition to the
normal banking facilities, a considerable number of spe-
cial " loan banks " had been organized at the outbreak
of war. These banks now began making chattel loans,
lending small sums, payable in the currency of the Societe
Generale, on the security of personal property. At the
same time, through the operations of the charitable de-
partment of the Belgian National Committee, the flow
of currency was aided by the payment of unemployment
benefits, old age pensions, and wages for work provided
by municipalities.
Large sums were borrowed from the Societe Generate
by the nine provinces, the loans being secured by notes
backed by the credit of the province, as well as by the
credit of the wealthier citizens. A singular commentary
could not provide a currency for us, the Standard Oil Company or
some other big institution might take over the issuance of bills and
coin, pledging for their redemption its own financial credit.
HARD CASH 277
on the whole extraordinary situation is found in the fact
that part, at least, of the eight million dollars a month
which Germany has exacted from Belgium as a war
contribution has been paid in the currency of the Societe
Generate.1
1 See Appendix XXIII, page 349.
OMHEINING
VAN /\ t . /. t.
ANTWERPEN Otcfci*^ f*
INTFRCOMMUNALE COM*
I A BIN ET
•n
VOOHZITTERS
if
cui
fc; ^ou. O
(RsJUeJ? i*svytcn<.Cf*t
Ut Mot^t &i^n CUpCU^Uy OUrt- jz£Jbw.Cy? Oj
fi'cfvUfa&e hi»c*K&> Hue. iUt-tJeJ
you*.
f~Cl* k. (ff
Od
&& &f ioi^» *«*P
JULY 4, 1915.
A Letter from Louis Franck Proposing to Make July Fourth a
Belgian National Holiday.
Oi CL
Lo w c<rmc
&* - a
1-0 you. oud MtcU. fo
cud
/fu
C/ .
<c««**/
J V&cJt/L BJL /haakf*U. lu ^ ou. to CowJUf *(«•
crwcwfo yeu*. cou*drui J /£*.
to /ho4 tt&xpu*caJLf<Me f ^CuJVUHto ^ifUcyvt^en^ frl
fo fa~Ot&>8 f lo&jm*. i**. &£&
CHAPTER VII
SAVING A NATION
THEIR DAILY BREAD
ALTHOUGH the Americans in Belgium perform a
variety of functions, they are there primarily for two
purposes: to see that the Germans strictly observe the
guarantee against requisitioning food supplies, and to see
that every Belgian man, woman, and child receives his
daily bread.1
Every Belgian more than two years old is entitled to
two hundred and fifty grams of bread per day, and it
is the business of the Commission to see that he gets it.
This ration, which, I believe, is considered by experts
to be extraordinarily low, was established at the beginning
of our work by Dr. Hindhede, then at the Solvay So-
ciological Institute in Brussels, and Horace Fletcher,
1 During my year's service in Antwerp there was only one
case in which German soldiers violated the guarantee's of pro-
tection granted to Commission food.
Two soldiers stopped a Belgian bread-cart and demanded
bread. The delivery-boy stoutly refused. The soldiers then set
upon him, grabbed two loaves out of the cart, threw at the boy
the money for them, and set off at a run.
Mr. Brand Whitlock writes : " I am glad to be able to say
that there is not a single instance in which a pound of food sent
under our guarantee has been touched by the German authorities."
•to
THEIR DAILY BREAD 281
the American food expert and father of the verb " to
fletcherize."
Of the members of the Commission for Relief in Bel-
gium Mr. Fletcher was dean, and he was one of our
most loyal, most enthusiastic, and most inventive work-
ers. He looked like an angelic boy, masquerading with
white wool for hair and eyebrows. War found him
studying at the Solvay Sociological Institute, but he vol-
unteered at once to help in the relief work, and his tasks
have been varied and important. For a while he was
" official taster," and it is a tradition amongst us that he
half poisoned himself, " trying out " gift goods sent into
Belgium by kind America! He prepared a concise and
interesting pamphlet on food values, containing delicious
recipes for preparing American products till then un-
known to the Belgians : " Susie's Spider Corn Cake,'*
Bouillie de Mais Frites, ou Hominy Frit, Petit Pains
Berkshire Muffins, and Petit Pains de Farine de
Mais Indien d'Amerique, were some of the products of
his skill. This pamphlet, in French and Flemish, was
spread broadcast, so that the American delegates and
Belgian committeemen spoke of " calories " with the
same easy familiarity that they had acquired with " bills
of lading," " excesses," and " under-weights."
At first some of our imports of high nutritive value
were almost useless to the Belgians. I do not refer to
delicacies such as sweet potatoes, maple syrup, and real
282 SAVING A NATION
Southern hominy, but such standard products as corn-
meal and oatmeal. Large quantities of both had been
given by generous Canadians and Americans. The
State of Iowa contributed a ship-load of corn. But
very few Belgians knew how to cook our national foods;
the Flemish peasants wished to use some of the choicest
of them as feed for chickens, so we had hastily to or-
ganize committees to begin a propaganda. Teachers
of domestic science from the city of Antwerp went
through the villages, lecturing before the peasants and
showing them how corn-meal should be cooked. The
prejudice against maize products as human food was
so strong, however, that our wares had to be rechristened,
and thus our good old-fashioned American corn-meal
and hominy were baptized " cerealine " and " idealine,"
and other alien and presumably appetizing names.
By Belgian rules of bread-making one hundred and
ninety grams of flour will make two hundred and fifty
grams of bread. In February, 1915, the ration was
raised to two hundred and fifty grams of flour — about
three hundred and twenty-five grams of bread — and
maintained on that basis except when failing supplies
cut the proportions.
Such a simple-looking mathematical rule for rationing
would seem to need no qualification, but only those who
have attempted to administer with the wisdom of Solo-
mon a trust like ours can understand the difficulties which
THEIR DAILY BREAD 283
arose. There were probably many peasants in the Cam-
pine who had small stores of rye flour which they could
mix with the American wheat flour, whereas the unem-
ployed workmen of the towns and cities had no re-
sources of any sort. Should we, then, discriminate
against the peasants? . . . The diet of bread for those
confined in prisons, hospitals, penal colonies, and asylums
is normally very large. Should we cut these rations to
our rule? . . . What about growing children in or-
phanages? . . . What about patients in hospitals, or
those being cared for at home? . . . Should all these
exceptional classes of persons be fed on gray war bread,
and should they receive only two hundred and fifty grams
per day, like everybody else?
A most picturesque plea came from a quarter where
Americans would never expect it. We were urged to
provide dog-bread! The Belgian dog — le Men de trait
— is a proletarian, not a parlor ornament, and is worthy
of his hire. Meat is always costly, so he is practically a
vegetarian, and his diet must be carefully looked after.
Bread is his staple food. . . . Dogs are absolutely neces-
sary to the peasants, and strange as the request seemed
at first, we finally, after careful study, decided to provide
a cheap bread for them.
Perhaps the most striking plea for exceptional treat-
ment was made by the director of a large Belgian
asylum. He assured us that the health and morale of his
institution depended upon an unusually large ration of
284 SAVING A NATION
bread, because, if the diet of the insane were restricted,
uproars and disorders would begin.
With the approval of the Brussels office we ruled
that the ration of bread must stand uniform throughout
the province, but that if in specific cases bread could
be proved a medicine, then, on a doctor's certificate, we
would allow a larger portion.
At one time we received complaints about the quality
of bread served in a city prison, and W. W. Strat-
ton went down to investigate. The manager of the
prison flatly contradicted all unfavorable reports, and ex-
plained to Stratton, with a wealth of detail, how fine
the bread really was.
" How much bread do you give your prisoners now,
Monsieur le Directeur?" asked Stratton.
" How much now ? — the same as always. And such
good bread, monsieur ! "
" Tiens! And is the quality of the bread the same as
always?"
" But yes, monsieur."
"Oh, la, la, la, la! Monsieur le Directeur, then it
is bad, very bad, most bad ; it cannot be worse. It cannot
be eaten, or digested ! " Stratton shrugged his shoulders
despairingly, as if there were no more words to express
the iniquity of the prison bread.
" But, monsieur ! " screamed the unfortunate manager.
" How can you know that ? "
" How can I know, monsieur? Attend! I have been
THEIR DAILY BREAD 285
your guest. In December I was a prisoner in this very
prison ! "
"Monsieur!"
" I ! The Germans did not like me, maybe. I had
just come into Belgium. They arrested me; they gave
me to you; you placed me in one of your choicest
cells, n'est-ce pas? I spent a day under your hospitable
roof. But you have forgotten, monsieur ? Comme c'est
triste; c'est triste, n'est-ce pas? " . . .
There was a very rapid improvement in the quality of
the prison fare.
The supply of white flour was strictly limited, so the
Commission imported wheat and milled it in Belgium.
This wheat, whether from North or South America, was
milled at ninety per cent ; in other words, it contained all
the bran except ten per cent. Such milling was a measure
of economy, for only the greatest care enabled us to give
the necessary ration of two hundred and fifty grams of
bread, and in many of the provinces ten per cent or fif-
teen per cent of corn-meal was added to the gray flour,
reducing the cost by about ten francs per hundred kilo-
grams, and enabling the committees to maintain the price
of bread at a minimum. Mills existed in each of the prov-
inces. Ten were employed in the province of Antwerp
alone. These were all under the management of the Com-
mission delegates and the Belgian committees, and were
required by the terms of their contracts to return 'to the
286 SAVING A NATION
committees every product and by-product of the milling
operations. The mills were also considered Commission
warehouses, under the protection of the American flag,
and deliveries to the communes were made direct from
them.
Thanks to our regulations, the price of bread, white or
gray, was always lower in Belgium than in London,
Paris, Rotterdam, or New York.1
JOYOUS ENTRIES
Whenever we dealt directly with the Belgian people
all went well; when we dealt with middlemen there was
apt to be trouble. This was particularly true in the dis-
tribution of flour. In the country districts and smaller
towns where the people did their own baking, we dis-
tributed flour directly to the consumers: in cities, on
the other hand, we delivered flour to the bakers, who
then supplied their customers with Commission bread.2
There is a Bible story which I now read with satisfac-
tion unknown to me before my stay in Belgium. It
runs:
When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was
good, he said unto Joseph, I also was in my dream, and
behold, I had three white baskets on my head:
And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of
1 See Appendix XXIV, page 351.
'See Appendix XXV, page 352.
JOYOUS ENTRIES 287
bake-meats for Pharaoh ; and the birds did eat them out of
the basket upon my head.
And Joseph answered and said, This is the interpreta-
tion thereof : The three baskets are three days :
Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head
from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree ; and the birds
shall eat thy flesh from off thee.
And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's
birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants . . .
But he hanged the chief baker : as Joseph had interpreted
to them.
At one time we needed a despot like Pharaoh to deal
with the Antwerp bakers, although as a rule we were
not gentle toward offenders. In the case in question,
however, the offenders were all the bakers of Antwerp,
and retaliatory measures were crushed by sheer weight
of their numbers.
To insure honest bread at honest weight and an honest
per capita distribution, the Commission began to card-
index all consumers in Belgium. Theretofore in Ant-
werp proper we had estimated requirements on the basis
of what we knew to be the whole population of the city.
Dividing that population among the big and little baker-
ies, we had a rough-and-ready method for distribution,
and we closely followed up complaints from the ultimate
consumers.
Card-indexing is slow but sure. Before the end of the
investigations I called for a progress report.
"Twelve bakers* lists are complete out of one hun-
288 SAVING A NATION
dred and eighty-five bakeries and forty-six pastry
shops."
"What do they show?"
" Every one of them is fraudulent. They've padded
their lists of customers — given names of refugees who
are in Holland or England, or purely fictitious names.
And we've been furnishing them with flour for three
weeks on a basis of lies ! It makes me sick."
" What do you want to do ? Fine them ? "
" We've done it : that is, I've insisted on fining the
biggest baker in the lot, but the Belgian committeemen
object."
"Why do they object?"
" They say all the hundred and eighty-five lists are
padded, and they think it's too hard on that one to fine
him alone ! "
In times of discouragement like these our only com-
fort was the positive knowledge that in spite of petty
fraud, every Belgian was being fed, and second, that
Provincial Committeeman J. G. Delannoy would person-
ally assault the baker who had offended.
In a long ministerial frock coat and tall collar, buzz-
ing through his teeth the tune of the Socialist Interna-
tionale, Mr. Delannoy would burst into the Commission
offices, roaring greetings right and left, smacking the
desks with his great hands, conquering ears and hearts
by his onslaught, and speaking an extraordinary mixture
JOYOUS ENTRIES 289
of English, French, and Flemish — a strong, meaty pot-
pourri of languages.
He was one of the most valued members of the
Provincial Committee, respected and admired, even by
his political enemies; a man of little fear and no favor,
with a penchant for strong-arm methods.
" Look here, Mr. Delannoy ! Stop that kolome-
Vendome-verdoeme anecdote a moment and listen to
this. We're going to fine Ixe for fraud."
" Mynheer 'Unt, I will explicate. It is the charAKter
of the Flemish pupils (people) to make fraudeur
(fraud)."
" Let's not discuss Flemish character."
" No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ! Listen. I, Delannoy,
moi, je, ik, I have make fraud — not now, nr>! — but in
peace. I make fraud by the Garde Civique — Civil
Guard — militia ! You know what is the Garde Civique? "
" Yes. It is like our National Guard."
" Eh bien! I desert, I skip drill, I make fraud."
" The deuce ! You're one of the * straightest ' men I
ever met."
" But no. I make fraud by the Garde Civique. It is
the charAKter of the pupils. Like you Americans; you
pay not the customs moneys in New York; isn't it? "
A long silence !
" It is the charAKter of the Flemish pupils ; always
they make fraudeur. But, Mynheer 'Unt, I will see
Ixe ; n'est-ce pas? "
29o SAVING A NATION
" Deal gently with him, for Heaven's sake. Don't
massacre him. We don't love him, but we don't want
him killed."
" I will kick him down the stair."
The splendid gifts of white flour from America were
reserved for hospitals and asylums, but enough remained
for us to give the whole province an occasional week
of white flour, to break the monotony of the gray.
These occasions were dubbed " joyous entries " by Mr.
Delannoy.
" They eat always with the eyes, the Flemish pupils,
Mynheer 'Unt. Us mangent ton jours avec les yeux;
vous comprenez? You know what is to ' eat with the
eyes ' ? The Flemish pupils look, look first. Then they
eat. La farine grise, it is joost so good as the white
flour; mais, c'est gris; ce n'est pas blanc. En fin!
The Flemish pupils make always kermis — picnic, good
time — for de witte bloem — white flour. C'est une
' joyeuse entree' n'est ce pas, Monsieur 'Unt? You
know what is a 'joyeuse entree'? I will explicate."
And with gusts of laughter he explained the tre-
mendous welcome which always greeted the first offi-
cial visit of a sovereign monarch to medieval Ant-
werp; called, by the old chroniclers, the "joyous
entry."
" It is the ' joyeuse entree ' of Emperoor White-Bread,
n'est-ce pas, Monsieur 'Unt?"
JOYOUS ENTRIES 291
Not the character of the Flemish, but war-time condi-
tions were at fault. The Commission had established a
partial monopoly of flour, without at the same time
establishing a monopoly of baking. The bakers were in
keen competition with each other, under conditions of
terrible strain. Many of them were delivering bread to
clients who could no longer pay, and the Commission all
the while was paring off the profit on bread-making to
keep the price as low as possible for the ultimate con-
sumers. At the same time the Dutch were smuggling
flour and bread over the Belgian border, and, although its
operations were not great, there was a legitimate com-
mittee (le comite limitrophe), formed under the patron-
age of Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and the chairman-
ship of a Dutch member of Parliament, to restore petty
commerce between the Dutch and Belgian border com-
munes.
On recommendation of the chairman of the committee,
a Mr. Fleskens, the Dutch Minister of Commerce and
Labor issued permits of exportation to proper persons.
The committee made no profits for itself, but the trans-
action was wholly commercial, since no attention was
paid to the needs of the destitute in Belgium. The most
important article in this petty commerce was white bread
baked in Holland and sent into Belgium for immediate
consumption. There was nothing to prevent the Ger-
mans seizing such bread if they liked. The complica-
292 SAVING A NATION
tions arising from such transactions in the midst of a
work like ours are obvious.
Commerce with Holland was not an easy thing. Few
could run the border without collusion with the German
sentries. Double lanes of barbed-wire stretched from the
North Sea almost to Aix-la-Chapelle, in Germany, and
these lanes were guarded by mounted patrols. The
geographical frontier is tortuous and not easily watched.
The first barrier, therefore, was a simple barbed-wire
fence. But well within the Belgian border was a second
line. Two closely knit, wickedly barbed fences, about
eight feet apart, were reinforced by a third barrier
which consisted of strands of wire electrically charged
with a high current and strung on posts some seven feet
high. Except at the highways, which were closely
guarded, this formidable barrier was continuous, and
land mines reinforced the barbed-wire lanes at several
points.
Yet some daring individuals managed to get through.
Barrels with men inside could be worked through the
wires, and step-ladders or vaulting poles were used to
surmount the entanglements, but the commonest way
seemed to be to sneak down the river courses or through
the swamps, and chance a drowning or the bullet from a
sentry's rifle.
Commerce under such conditions was romantic rather
than profitable.
BREAD LINES AND SOUP KITCHENS 293
BREAD LINES AND SOUP KITCHENS
One difficulty we encountered in our conflict with the
bakers was lack of support on the part of the committee-
men of the arrondissement of Antwerp. There was a
reason for this. Many of them felt that the war would
shortly be over and that a makeshift organization
was sufficient for the interim. To some of our best
friends we must have seemed incorrigible pessimists
in our everlasting insistence on a permanent relief
structure.
Once when Stratton, as arrondissement delegate for
Antwerp, disagreed with his Belgian committee, the com-
mittee suggested that we appeal the case to the head-
quarters of the Commission in Brussels. To this I
gladly assented, and the committee, including Stratton,
took the next train.
They returned in a day or two, well satisfied. The
Brussels director had ruled in accordance with our
wishes, and the Belgian committee was now unanimous
for war on the wicked.
" Monsieur le Directeur Crosby agrees with Monsieur
Hunt and Monsieur Stratton. It is all arranged. We
will fine that bad baker five thousand francs and sus-
pend his flour for two weeks."
Stratton winked at me broadly over the head of the
speaker. " All is arranged/* he echoed.
" But how did you do it ? " I asked, when the com-
294 SAVING A NATION
mitteemen had gone. " The courier was in town today,
and he says Mr. Crosby is in the north of France."
" He is. But it seemed too bad to spoil our visit to
Brussels just for that, so I talked it all over with some-
body in the Brussels office and brought him in to talk to
the committee."
" You did not introduce him as Mr. Crosby ! "
" Of course I'll answer if you insist." . . . Stratton
whistled a bar of the Brabangonne. ..." But what's
a name between friends?"
In pleasing contrast to the unsatisfactory state of the
distribution of flour to the bakers was the distribution
of bread and soup to the poor from the Antwerp soup
kitchens. Since the beginning of the war the number
of bread lines and soup kitchens in the greater city had
grown to fifteen. In December, 1914, at one station
several men in a single week fainted from hunger; but
that never afterwards occurred, although we were feed-
ing more than thirty-five thousand daily. At least ten
times during the period from December first to mid-
January there were days when soup could be had but
no bread, although the universal rule of the Commission
was first to care for the destitute of all classes.
The ration of soup and bread given at the kitchens
cost from ten to twelve centimes per day per person, and
was of excellent quality. Every person brought his own
spoon, and might carry his bread home to eat there if
BREAD LINES AND SOUP KITCHENS 295
he wished. Ten of the soup kitchens were in school-
houses. Before the war the Antwerp schools were
equipped to feed a hot soup at mid-day to such of their
pupils as needed it, so that a part of the necessary equip-
ment was at hand, and the municipality furnished extra
boilers and other utensils.1
There were four standard varieties of soups — pea,
bean, vegetable, and bouillon — but variations in the
amount of rice which might be added gave practically a
new soup for each day.
Every person carried a card, stamped with the name
of the soup station and the name of the bearer, with
blank spaces where the dates of deliveries of soup might
be indicated. The kitchens were open only between
11.30 A. M. and 1.15 P. M. They often opened with
grace, spoken by a priest.
Discipline was strict, and the people were remarkably
clean. They might be poor and hungry, but they were
never dirty. The loathsome filth one might expect was
not to be seen in Belgium, and this striking evidence of
self-respect was the more noteworthy because soap never
is furnished gratis to the Belgian poor.
The cleanliness of the kitchens, too, was admirable, in
spite of the frequent rainy weather and the relays of
people. The workers in the kitchens were almost all of
them volunteers, among them men and women teachers,
nuns, and priests. Every one had work assigned
1 See Appendix XXVI, page 353.
296 SAVING A NATION
him: peeling potatoes, serving food, or supervising
cooking.
At the suggestion of the Commission, a more careful
system of identification cards was installed in the soup
stations, and their administrators became a part of our
local Antwerp organization.
There were three milk kitchens and three baby clinics
maintained in Antwerp by volunteers. Before the war
about thirty-five out of every forty mothers nursed their
babies. Some idea of the prevalent demoralization may
be gathered from the fact that four months after the
fall of Antwerp hardly five out of forty mothers were
able to do so.
Economic restaurants were available for those whose
means allowed a payment of part but not the
full price for food. Three such restaurants were
founded in Antwerp, and for fifty centimes or less a
good meal was provided in dining-rooms which had
none of the barrack-room air of bread line and soup
kitchen. Wherever a Belgian had money he paid for
his food ; but the Commission served rich and poor alike.1
HEALTH, CLOTHING, AND HOUSING
Belgium needed far more than bread. Thousands had
neither clothes nor dwellings ; millions had no work ; peo-
ple of all classes were cold and idle and ill. The task
1 See Appendix XXVII, page 354, and Appendix XXVIII, page
356.
HEALTH, CLOTHING, AND HOUSING 297
of the Commission for Relief in Belgium could not long
remain a simple doling out of rations, for food was al-
most useless without other things as well — clothing, fuel,
dwelling houses, money, and good health.
Typhoid and black measles were the first epidemics re-
ported. In the neighborhood of Willebroeck — a town of
twelve thousand inhabitants, where dykes had been cut
and the district inundated in a vain effort to keep the
Germans out of Antwerp — seventy-five cases of typhoid
were known and others were suspected.
Ernest P. Bicknell, director of civilian relief for the
American Red Cross, Henry James, Jr., and Dr.
Wy cliff e Rose, all representing the Rockefeller Founda-
tion of New York, visited Belgium in December and
prepared a report on conditions in typical communes.
Before January first, 1915, the Rockefeller Foundation
contributed almost a million dollars to the work of Bel-
gian relief, and established a station in Rotterdam called
the Rockefeller Foundation War Relief Commission,
to assist the Commission for Relief in Belgium. This
station had charge of the sorting and shipping of clothes
sent from America for Belgium, and among its volunteer
workers were two American women, Dr. Caroline
Hedger and Miss Janet A. Hall, who had served
on the Chicago Health Department and were in
Holland as representatives of the Chicago Woman's
Club. At my request these ladies came to the province
of Antwerp as volunteer health officers.
298 SAVING A NATION
The winter was cold and damp as an icy sponge, but
Dr. Hedger and Miss Hall set out at once, with a supply
of their own vaccine, for the scene of the most impor-
tant epidemic. At Willebroeck they lived for two
weeks in a tiny suite of rooms over a Flemish estaminet,
were mould was so thick on the walls that one could
scrape it off with one's fingers. In two weeks' time they
never once were thoroughly warm, although they were
admirably dressed ; yet Belgians lived through the winter
clad only in cotton and wearing carpet-slippers.
The two devoted women went into every house where
a typhoid case was known or suspected. A typical visit
was to the village of Sauvegard where they found every
one of seven members of the van der Zeippen family ill
or convalescent from typhoid. As Dr. Hedger tells it,
"Their house had been destroyed and they had lost all
their farm possessions but one cow. They were living
in one side of a dirt-floored barn that belonged to some
friend, and some one else had given them a bed. But
why this family was living at all, I do not know. They
had rushed away ahead of the Germans with one hun-
dred and eighty Belgian soldiers at the time of the re-
treat toward Antwerp , and of the one hundred and
eighty soldiers only twenty got out alive. Yet this
family had come out intact, and survived typhoid fever
after that. There were tears in the eyes of that mother
— almost the only weeping we saw in Belgium."
Strangely enough, they found all the recent cases were
HEALTH, CLOTHING, AND HOUSING 299
traceable, not to the inundations, but to the congested
refugee camps in Holland, especially those in Flushing.
It was a sad commentary on the generosity of the Dutch
that their Belgian barracks actually spread disease among
the inmates. But it was reassuring to find that we had
practically no native epidemics near Willebroeck. This
was due in part to the able work of local Belgian
physicians, for the German military doctors did not take
care of Belgian civilians.
In addition to tracing the source of the Willebroeck
infection and inoculating the people against typhoid,
Dr. Hedger and Miss Hall presented to the Commission
about three thousand dollars' worth of anti-typhoid vac-
cine, originally the gift of Dr. Mary T. Lincoln of the
Chicago Woman's Club, and with this we stamped out
the cases of typhoid in other centers of infection.
Dr. Hedger's own words should tell of the conclusion
of her stay in Willebroeck.
"We were invited to a Sunday dinner at the house
of the acting-Burgomaster, Dr. Persoons. All the blinds
were down, so we ate by artificial light. It was a small
and simple party. Each gentleman had an American
button in the lapel of his coat, and the ladies wore the
Belgian and American colors. After dinner we were in-
vited into the parlor for coffee, as the custom is, and
there, hung from the ceiling, was a great silk American
300 SAVING A NATION
flag, with President Wilson's picture on the wall beneath
it. How they got this flag and picture in that little town
I do not know, but there they were!
" As soon as we had had our coffee, the door into the
hall opened, and there came in a procession headed by
four little children, two boys and two girls; two carry-
ing flowers in their hands, and two with their silk school-
flags — their Belgian flags. Then I understood why the
blinds had been drawn. Belgians are not allowed to dis-
play their flag in public in any way, so they had been
obliged to bring them in in the night.
" The little children advanced and read a Flemish ad-
dress, thanking America for the Christmas Ship and pre-
senting us with their flowers. I replied through the in-
terpreter, and supposed that was all. But the children
fell back after presenting the flowers, and then the
secretary of the Town Council read a letter of thanks
that was one of the most exquisite bits of English I
ever heard. It was not absolutely neutral, so you will
have to wait until the war is over before you can get the
exact wording of those thanks. After this reading wine
was brought, and each gentleman came forward, touched
glasses, bowed, and gave his thanks individually to
America. . . . They apologized because those beauti-
fully arranged flowers were artificial. They said their
greenhouses had all been broken in the bombardment, and
they could not express in beautiful flowers, as they might
do in days of peace, their gratitude to America."
HEALTH, CLOTHING, AND HOUSING 301
In the work at Willebroeck Dr. Hedger and Miss Hall
came into intimate contact with all the needs of the peo-
ple. The lack of proper clothing, for example, was pitia-
ble. For three months some of the children of Wille-
broeck had stayed away from school, literally because
they had no clothing to go in. In every household the
brightest child was selected to wear what clothes were
available. Little boys appeared in their sisters' dresses
and little girls in boy's clothes.
This situation was a commonplace. Appeals for
clothing came to Antwerp from all parts of the province.
The war had come at harvest time, when clothes are a
secondary consideration, and the people had never had
an opportunity to provide themselves for the winter.
We never had enough to supply them. It was only when
the generous gifts of clothing began to come from
America through the Rockefeller Foundation War Re-
lief Commission, that the situation improved at all.1
Temporary houses, too, had to be constructed for the
returning refugees and the peasants in the ruined vil-
lages. The building of these was one of the most inter-
esting and able works of our excellent Belgian com-
mittees.2
1 See Appendix XXIX, page 357.
8 See Appendix XXX, age 359.
Abri co Meet if pour quatre menages. (Ouvriers).
1 8 a 24 personnel (8 ft 1 2 (its) — 4 i 8 tetes de twtall.
1° Composition par abri. — Habitation.
Au rez-de-chaussee , .
Al'etage . , . .
I Cuisine . . .. 3,50 a 4,00 X 5,40 ffl.
I Chambre a couchor . . 2,40 x 2,50
, . . Grenier. » , » , Memes dimensions
Etable *<,..,.... 2.50 x 1,65
2* Surface batie pour le grouj-e.
4 habitations. 20,60 x 5,80 m. «= 119.48 in"- c'*
4 ctables . , 5,50 X 3,60 in. — 19.80
139,28
c'*'
Sf DevJs pour le gronpft
Chan* Fr. 90.—
Bois (charpentel , A « . -» 700.—
Portes et fehetres . , . . » 245. —
Carton bitumc . . , * * a: 85. —
Vitrerie et peinture ... » 65.—
Averages. ,...., '» 36*.—
Materiauz •»»•«* Pavement monoli the en ciment » 36. —
Cuves en ciment pour fosse
d'aisance et puits. . . » 81.—
Pate de papier et Fmprevu* -• » '60 —
Intervention totile du Co m i if Provincial Fr. 1398. —
Briquesdo reinploi fournies par !a
commune. Evaluces a Fr. 250. —
Fr.1648.—
Main-d'ceuvre tchomeurs) «..*«,«.«»... » 350. —
Total par groupe Fr.1998.—
4° Prix par metre carre de surface batie »•••««««« Fr. 14.35
» par tete d'habitant j P<>°r 16 peraounes .,,... . 125.-
ESTIMATED COST OF TEMPORARY HOUSE FOR FOUR WORKINGMEN's
FAMILIES.
ot.r*.
+~t*3.n. «=^A7tfcrrt£i
//
Arch. Bergtr.
PLAN OF TEMPORARY HOUSE FOR FOUR WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES.
304 SAVING A NATION
UNEMPLOYMENT
Normally 1,757,489 persons are engaged in Belgian
commerce and industry, and the state of many of these
was desperate. In January, 1915, Mr. Michel Levie,
president of the Board of Directors of the National As-
sociation of Light Railways, drew up for the National
Committee an extensive plan for unemployment relief.
Excluding agricultural laborers, the entire body of
artisans and employees of industry and commerce of
both sexes, more than sixteen years old, who, living on
the product of their work, had been deprived of this
work because of the war, and who were actually at the
moment in want, were embraced in the plan. These
chomeurs, as the unemployed are called in French, were
to be utilized by the communal organizations in public
works, such as draining, ditching, constructing embank-
ments, and building sewers. The communal authorities
having such employment in charge were especially rec-
ommended to work through the Labor Exchanges, Un-
employment Benefit Associations, Trades Unions, and
other similar bodies. The relief was to be distributed
in food or other supplies, in money, or in the form of
relief coupons or salary checks.
To carry out this plan the National Committee,
through the Provincial Committees, subsidized the com-
munal organizations up to nine-tenths of the assistance
UNEMPLOYMENT 305
to be allowed to the unemployed, the commune to
furnish the other one-tenth.
The basis was interesting. If the unemployed were a
bachelor, he received three francs per week; if the head
of a family, three francs for himself, plus one and one-
half francs for his wife or housekeeper, and fifty cen-
times for each child less than sixteen years old, living
with the parents and not working. A woman in industry
received the same sum as a man.
The communes were obliged to furnish to the Provin-
cial Committees, for transmission to the National Com-
mittee, certified lists of their unemployed, and rigid rules
with frequent examinations of the lists were provided
to prevent frauds. Invalids, the infirm, victims of acci-
dents who were receiving other assistance, wives and
children benefiting by the relief allowed to families
of soldiers, or men without employment who refused
to accept the work provided for them by the com-
munes, were excluded from the lists of chomeurs.
The first enrolment of the classified unemployed in
Belgium amounted to more than seven hundred and sixty
thousand names. Including those dependent upon them
the number was one million three hundred and forty-
seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-two persons.
In the province of Antwerp out of a total population
of one million eighty-seven thousand five hundred the
number of unemployed was two hundred and thirteen
3o6 SAVING A NATION
thousand three hundred and ninety-seven, and this
number steadily increased.1
The first purpose of unemployment relief was to pro-
vide a certain minimum of assistance which would
include food, clothing, shelter, fuel, and other things
necessary to maintain the family life of the workers.
Its second purpose was to provide employment, and
so to combat the growing demoralization of the coun-
try. From an administrative point of view, however,
it brought complications.
Up to this time the Germans had secured a certain
amount of labor from the Belgians, and would probably
have secured more had the unemployment relief re-
mained unorganized. They could of course provide em-
ployment for only a few classes of Belgian workmen,
but the system of communal relief for the unemployed
practically closed all doors against them. Thereafter
Belgians could work without working for the Germans.
The Commission was thoroughly alive to the danger.
The plan of relief for the unemployed was a Belgian
plan, the administrators were Belgians, and the recipi-
ents of course were Belgians. We were neutrals; Bel-
gians were belligerents. We needed constantly to be on
our guard against unscrupulous patriots who might use
us to club the Germans. From Minister Brand Whit-
1 See Appendix XXXI, page 361, and Appendix XXXII, page
362.
UNEMPLOYMENT 307
lock down to the humblest worker in the Commission,
we were overwhelmed with appeals for protection which
we had no right to hear and with which we had
no power to deal. This was awkward for the Commis-
sion and irritating to the Germans. Neither we nor the
Belgians were wholly to blame, but the situation did not
flatter German pride and undoubtedly aroused their suspi-
cions.
In the plans for chomeur relief, then, the Commission
was not involved, but as a matter of administrative fact
the Commission and the National Relief Committee
were married partners, and neither could act without in-
volving the other.
CHAPTER VIII
DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS
HAULING DOWN THE FLAG
A CHANGE had come about in the attitude of the Ger-
man authorities toward the Commission for Relief in
Belgium and the National Committee. The Germans,
like every one else, had expected a short war. Belgian
relief was a temporary measure. But with every month
of lengthened warfare the work of relief and the work of
government in Belgium became more definite and inclu-
sive and the occasions for misunderstandings increased.
On October sixteenth, 1914, Governor-General von
de Goltz had written with the utmost cordiality to
the Central Relief Committee. " I approve with lively
satisfaction the work of the Central Relief Committee,"
his letter runs, " and I do not hesitate formally and ex-
pressly to give by this letter assurance that foodstuffs
of all sorts imported by the Committee to feed the civil
population are reserved exclusively for the needs of the
population of Belgium, that consequently these food-
stuffs are exempt from requisition on the part of the mili-
tary authorities, and that they remain exclusively at the
disposition of the Committee." Eight months later, on
308
HAULING DOWN THE FLAG 309
June twenty-sixth, 1915, Governor-General von Bissing
wrote to the Minister-patrons of the Committee in a very
different strain. " Having myself made an estimate of
the damages occasioned by the war/' announced the
Governor-General, "no inquiries on the subject of
requisitions by the German troops will be permitted.
" The inspectors of the committees and the Commission
for Relief in Belgium have the right to make statements
of abuses committed by millers, and so forth, but their
right is confined to making these statements. It is then
permitted them to communicate to the competent authori-
ties (the German Government), with a request to them
to give the complaints the attention they deserve."
Until July the committees and the Commission
had punished infractions of rules either by fining the re-
calcitrants or withdrawing supplies for brief periods. If
a baker gave short weight or bad bread and was con-
victed of it, we were able either to drive him out of
business or to put him in a temper to play fair with us
in future. The two or three instances of communes
where burgomasters or other officers were unfair, who
exploited either the money or the food which we gave
them, were met in a similar way. Now, on proclamation
of the Governor-General, this power was taken from us,
and we were reduced to the slow processes of Belgian law
under the auspices of the German military authorities.
Such a restriction was inevitable in time. But the
temper, if not the ruling itself, seemed hostile: The
3io DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS
first evidences of German irritation had been shown
long before. Officers in Pass Bureaus and at sentry-
posts argued with the Commission delegates the morality
of American shipments of arms to the Allies. Our
monthly passes for automobiles became more difficult to
get. Twice or thrice we were forced to lie idle for a
day or two on account of the failure of Pass Bureaus
to provide our passes promptly.
The inexhaustible kindness which the Belgians showed
us seemed to irritate some of the Germans. On one oc-
casion Provincial Committeeman Delannoy applied to
General von Bodenhausen, Governor of the city of
Antwerp, for permission to show (t les americains "
through the vast sewer system underlying the streets — -a
system comparable to the Parisian system described by
Victor Hugo in Les Miserables.
" Permission to boat through the passageways to show
the Americans the sewers of Antwerp?"
" Yes, General."
" Certainly not. I will do nothing for the Americans."
Next the authorities objected to the American flag on
automobiles and warehouses of the Commission. Ger-
man officers stopped Commission cars and warned us
that there was but one flag in Belgium and that was the
German flag. We had flown our flag over our ware-
houses and storehouses in every city and village in Bel-
gium. It gave the Belgian people a feeling of security
GREAT BRITAIN TAKES A HAND 311
to see the stars-and-stripes in their midst. It made them
feel that the weight of the United States was behind their
bread supply.
At least one German officer, Major-General von Long-
champ, stationed at Namur, was a pleasant exception to
the circle of objectors. He insisted that the delegates
fly the flag on their automobiles, and suggested that
they wear American rosettes in their buttonholes, " Be-
cause," he said, " it makes the Belgian people more
confident and happy."
But the American Minister did not see things as we
did. He dreaded hostile demonstrations and deprecated
any use of the American flag by the Belgians. At last
he ordered us to remove the flag from our automobiles.
He then negotiated with the Governor-General who de-
creed that the Commission must haul down the flag from
all warehouses except the principal warehouse in cities
where a German Governor had his residence, and that
we might hoist in the Flemish provinces a white ensign
on which was lettered, " Nationaal Hulp- en Voedings-
Komiteit" — and in the French-speaking provinces,
" Comite National de Secours et d" Alimentation "
GREAT BRITAIN TAKES A HAND
The Governor-General specifically took from the
benevolent department of the National Relief Com-
mittee privileges which it had hitherto exercised — such
as the use of the Commission courier service and the
3i2 DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS
transmission of uncensored instructions to the communal
organizations — and abrogated its right to discipline its
agents. In cases of fraud the committees were in-
structed to appeal either to local Belgian police courts,
whose decisions were subject to military review, or to
the German Civil Government.
In his letter of June twenty-sixth to the Minister-
patrons the Governor-General included this ominous
paragraph : " All tendency on the part of the National
Committee to monopolize the distribution of charitable
assistance in Belgium must be stopped. The principle
must be maintained that all other charitable organiza-
tions, above all, the Belgian Red Cross, have the right
to act side by side with, and outside of, the National
Committee."
The National Relief Committee had never claimed,
nor could it claim, a monopoly of Belgian relief work.
Its policy was federal, not monopolistic. Its aim was re-
lief in Belgium and nothing else. Scores of existing re-
lief organizations had been patronized and subsidized by
the Committee, but all were engaged in work which was
humanitarian and at bottom neutral. Any other basis
was impossible. Mr. Brand Whitlock, the Marquis of
Villalobar, and their colleague and new Minister-patron,
Jonkheer de Weede, Dutch Minister at Havre, could not
have lent their names to any other program.
But on the other hand the Belgian Red Cross was no
longer Belgian. The German authorities, for reasons
GREAT BRITAIN TAKES A HAND 313
which have not been made clear, had taken charge of
it, and Prince Hatzfeldt was its head.
Then as always when we were in great difficulty in
Belgium came Herbert C. Hoover.
A letter preceded him from the Marquess of
Crewe, Lord President of the British Council, de-
manding that the German Government hand over to
the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the National
Relief Committee, for distribution to the Belgians, the
whole of the indigenous cereal crop for 1915, and
add to this the usual guarantees against military requi-
sition.
All small matters under negotiation faded before this
fundamental demand. We were informed by the British
Admirality that shipments into Belgium must cease on
August fifteenth, unless the demand were complied with
before that date.
Exactly what followed is known only to a few men.
Berlin, not Brussels, took the helm. There came a sud-
den reversal of policies. Embarrassing orders which
had previously been given were tacitly ignored and
the entire cereal crop of Belgium was reserved for the
Belgians on the terms insisted upon by Great Britain.
From the harvests of 1915 the Commission for Relief
in Belgium received as steward for the Belgian people
fifteen thousand tons of wheat per month, and imported
from abroad a supplemental fifty-five thousand tons per
month.
3i4 DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS
To requisition the crop the German General Govern-
ment constituted an interesting bit of machinery called
the Central Crop Commission on which there were five
Germans, one Belgian, and one American. A maximum
price was decreed at which the crop was to be purchased
of the farmer and a maximum price at which flour was
to be sold throughout Belgium. Barley was requisi-
tioned for the Belgian breweries; rye was apportioned
between human and animal consumers; and traffic in
cereals outside of the channels of the Commission was
absolutely prohibited.
The function of the Central Crop Commission was to
requisition the crop under such circumstances as made it
easy for the Belgian National Committee and the Com-
mission for Relief in Belgium to purchase and distribute
it to the ultimate consumers. Provincial co-operative so-
cieties were instituted with sufficient capital available to
buy one-twelfth of the crop each month, and it was then
turned over to the committees, and by them distributed
as if it were imported grain.14
The tension at headquarters relaxed abruptly and a
fairer and franker attitude toward the Commission
and the National Committee took the place of the earlier
distrust. It is safe to infer that much of this was due
to Herbert C. Hoover.
'See Appendix XXXIII, page 365, and Appendix XXXIV,
page 366.
FEEDING THE NORTH OF FRANCE 315
FEEDING THE NORTH OF FRANCE
The work of the Commission now touched a much
larger number of people than at first. Its more than
seven million four hundred thousand clients had grown
to nearly ten million. On April nineteenth, 1915, the
Commission, represented by its Brussels director, Oscar
T. Crosby, and the Quartermaster Department of the
German General Staff Headquarters in the north of
France, represented by Major von Kessler, signed an
agreement extending the American relief work into those
departments of the north of France within the German
zone of occupation, and affecting a population of two
million one hundred and forty thousand. Five autono-
mous districts were created: Lille, with a population of
six hundred and seventy thousand; Valenciennes, with
six hundred and twenty thousand; Saint Quentin, with
three hundred and thirty thousand; Vervins, with two
hundred and eighty thousand; Rethel-Charleville, with
one hundred and fifty thousand; and Longwy, with
ninety thousand. Maubeuge, with one hundred thousand,
and Givet-Fumay, with thirty thousand inhabitants,
had already been annexed for purposes of the relief
work to the Belgian province of Namur.1
For each of these districts two American delegates
were appointed, and a German officer who spoke both
French and English was especially assigned to co-op-
1 See Appendix XXXV, page 367.
3i6 DIPLOMATIC CONQUESTS
erate with the Americans, to accompany them everywhere,
and to censor all their telegrams or letters. In theory,
the German " nurse " and the American delegates were
inseparable. The Americans rode in military automo-
biles, and they could be provided with free lodgings and
the food and service belonging to a German officer, if
they so desired.
The same guarantees covered Commission supplies in
the north of France as in Belgium.
The spirit of the work in France differed from that
in most of Belgium. The misery was as great, or even
greater when the work began, but the people seemed
less energetic, less resistant than the Belgian populations.
Commission delegates often remarked that the conquered
French seemed to feel less outraged by the war. " If the
Germans were not here, our armies might be in their
country. It is war," an old man once said to me sadly.
But the cause lay deeper than philosophy. It lay to
some extent in the lack of leaders and a lack of organiza-
tion. Most of the notables were gone. The young men
were in the French army; the older and more important
citizens were also beyond the German lines. There
were no such men as Cardinal Mercier, Emile Francqui,
Louis Solvay, or Jean Jadot in the north of France.
The land was a vast concentration camp guarded at
every point. But another reason for the listlessness lay
in the fact that in northern France there lives a dis-
spirited, exhausted, worked-out racial stock. Hunch-
FEEDING THE NORTH OF FRANCE 317
backs, cripples, and other deformities are common ; for it
is the industrial and unromantic portion, the Pittsburgh
district of France, which the German armies hold, and
modern industry had taken its toll of the inhabitants
long before militarism laid its hand upon them.1
1 See Appendix XXXVI, page 368.
CHAPTER IX
AMERICA AND BELGIUM
THE GOLDEN LEGEND
" ' How America saved Belgium ' would make a fine
title for a book on the relief work/' suggested a friend.
" But it wouldn't be true."
"Wouldn't be true?"
"No. Not yet, at any rate. The Belgians aren't
saved yet. Saving them is a day to day work until the
end of the war. Besides that, America hasn't done the
bulk of it so far."
" Hasn't? Why, what is all this Belgian gratitude for?
You say America hasn't done the work? Who has?"
" Let me ask you a question first. Do you know how
much it costs per month to feed Belgium and northern
France ? "
" I haven't the ghost of an idea."
" Approximately $7,500,000 for Belgium, and $4,400,-
ooo for France. And do you know how much cash
America has contributed up to May thirty-first, 1916?
Approximately $1,147,600. . . . And how much food?
Approximately $4,809,100 worth. . . . And how much
clothing? Most of $4,500,000 worth. . . . Add them
318
THE GOLDEN LEGEND 319
all together and count them all as food, and you have
$10,456,700. Divide that by the monthly requirement,
$7,500,000 — notice that I omit the north of France al-
together— and you have food for Belgium for one and
two-fifths months, or about forty-three days.
" Take the two million five hundred thousand desti-
tute who are our special wards. They are about one-
third of the total population of Belgium. Multiply forty-
three days by three, and you have one hundred and
twenty-nine days, or about four months' life for the
destitute, if they alone are considered.
" That is not the whole story, of course. The operat-
ing expenses of the Commission have been less than one
per cent of its expenditures, largely because of the
volunteer services given by its members, most of whom
are Americans. Hoover time and again has mentioned
this in his reports as a contribution amounting to mil-
lions and millions of dollars. As long ago as June
thirtieth, 1915, he estimated it at $4,800,000.
" And that is not all. Hoover says in one of his re-
ports : ' One feature of publicity has been of the utmost
importance to this work. The Commission felt that with
the tendency to toss the ball of responsibility for feed-
ing the civil population between the belligerents, the
greatest hope of maintaining the open door for the im-
portation of foodstuffs into Belgium and the retention
of native food, was to create the widest possible public
opinion on the subject. We believed that if the rights
320 AMERICA AND BELGIUM
of the civil population in the matter of food could be
made a question of public interest second to the war it-
self, then the strongest bulwark in support of the Com-
mission would have been created. Public opinion in this
matter has been developed to a remarkable degree, and
has yielded results which cannot now well be discussed
at the length the subject warrants, but they have been of
transcendent importance in the solution of the whole
problem/
" These things are big. The trouble is people think
the work is done and so tie Hoover's hands while they
pride themselves on his achievement. They can hardly
realize that the Belgian Government is straining every
nerve to help, that a group of French banks has stood
manfully by the work in the north of France, and yet
that more money must be had.1 They surely do not
realize that charitable people in the British Empire are
giving more to Belgian relief than Americans are this
minute. Their contribution was more than $12,000,000
up to May thirty-first, 1916, and still goes on. Small but
steady contributions do the most good."
" But America is so big, and there are so many other
things to think about," my friend said fretfully. " Aren't
we Americans a little tired of Belgium ? " . . .
We were sitting in the hall of the Hotel des Indes in
the Hague — a gilded nest of international spies, where
1 See Appendix XXXVIII, page 372.
THE GOLDEN LEGEND 321
secret service agents of half a dozen countries wear the
livery of porters, chauffeurs, maidservants, and waiters,
or cultivate the languor and Parisian gr^ace of guests. It
was a nauseating atmosphere in which to discuss the
Belgian work; an atmosphere of intrigue and cynicism
and brutality.
My thoughts jumped back into Belgium, and I had
sight again of the marvelous vision of America
which Belgians believe in as they believe in God —
the America which, my friend said, had grown a
little tired of Belgium. It was a vision of a new At-
lantis, rich, kind, secure from the dangers of war ; a land
where there is no oppression, a land of toleration and
understanding, where every man, woman, and child is a
democrat, where there are no classes and no masses,
where there is no conflict between parties, or between
Church and State, where every one is a friend to those
who are suffering in this war from no fault of their own ;
a mighty land which can afford to be generous to its
neighbors, near and far; a land where there is one lan-
guage, one spirit, and one flag.
Of course the picture is overdrawn. Of course we are
not much different from Belgians, or any other people in
this tired world. Chapters of our national history, such
as our dealings with the Indians, the Mexican War,
or the way we deal with industrial disputes, are fortu-
nately unknown to our friends across the sea. But it
seemed to me this Golden Legend might be made in' part
322 AMERICA AND BELGIUM
a fact if America were to understand, humbly and hu-
manly to understand, and to support in every way — with
money, and service, and national pride in a great
achievement — the work of the Commission for Relief in
Belgium and of Herbert Clark Hoover.
That is one reason why this book is written.
LA BELLE BELGIQUE
The day came when I left Belgium to go to America
with Herbert C. Hoover, who had crossed the frontier a
few days before. A thick mist clung to the landscape;
the cold, drenching mist which often hid the Belgian soil
like a shroud. And a mist of tears flooded my eyes.
Leaving Belgium for America was like leaving home to
go home.
At the first frontier post an officer whom I had often
seen on my trips to and from Holland stepped out and
took the passports and inspected the luggage piled high
in the automobile. A lancer rode by in the half-light.
Ghostly gray sentries stole out with lanterns to the
barbed-wire entanglements and high-tension power sta-
tion for charging electric cables which kill those who
try to cross the No Man's Land between Belgium and the
outer world. Other soldiers who had been loafing in
the sentry house came out to stare in silence at the motor-
car.
The officer reappeared and handed me the vised pass-
ports.
LA BELLE BELGIQUE 323
"Bitte sehr, Herr Hunt," he said. " It is for the last
time, nicht wahrf May I speak to you frankly? Yes?
. . . The Americans are not our friends. Tell them the
truth when you get to America, nicht wahrf Only the
truth."
" I will tell them only the truth," I answered soberly.
" But, Herr Officer, in time to come, when you and I see
more clearly, in fifty years from now "
" In fifty years ! " he repeated bitterly. " Maybe we
shall all be dead in fifty minutes. You Americans
furnish ammunition "
"And bread," I interrupted. "Never forget that.
When you think of the ammunition we sell, think of
the bread we give to Belgium. Good-by, Herr Officer,
and a safe return to Germany. A uf Wiederseh'n in
Deutschland, when the war is over."
"Auf Wiederseh'n, when there is peace. Gute Reise
— good journey," he said.
The red lantern in the sentry's hand dropped from
sight, and my automobile sprang forward. " Gute
Reise" a voice called from the dark. Mist rolled down
like a sea, the lamps of the car were blinded with mois-
ture, and the road swam beneath. ... I thought and
thought of the ravished land which I was leaving : a land
almost as dear to me as home ; a place of multitudes of
friendships, of countless kindnesses which I had re-
ceived, not for myself but for the American people.
324 AMERICA AND BELGIUM
The trunks piled in my automobile held hundreds of
souvenirs: flour sacks embroidered by friends, medal-
lions, lace, paintings, etchings, silk banners, books, parch-
ment rolls, and other intimate reminders of the work and
the war.1 But memories more precious even than these
were written in my mind and heart: the loyalty of
friends, the hardships and triumphs of the task of relief,
the spirit of the men who had served with me in Ant-
werp, the finished organization which we, Americans and
Belgians alike, had at last achieved; the personal knowl-
edge that more than a million people had for one year
at any rate received their food, had been kept in good
health, and had risen from the pit of despair into self-
respect and confidence and hope. It was a work which
must go on day by day to the end of the war.
And what splendid people these Belgians are! I had
not seen much of the Walloons, but American delegates
from the southern provinces were loud in praise of them.
The Flemings I knew and loved. A proud, stiff-necked,
stoutly independent people; insubordinate, tenacious,
clever — they are a stock which will not die ; a fine element
in European history in the past, and with great promise
for the future.
The automobile sped on into Esschen — the frontier
town where on my first visit to Belgium I had seen
refugees flying from the Germans. Now, in the bleak
1 See Appendix XXXIX, page 372.
„. M rn,an rvBE HUNT
FLOUR SACKS
Embroidered and painted by the Belgians as souvenirs for the Americans.
LA BELLE BELGIQUE 325
rooms of the Town Hall sat a relief committee
— reliable, hard-working, conscientious volunteers —
providing daily rations of war bread and other food,
clothing, money, and work for the people of their com-
mune. It was a vast change from the chaos of the year
before. The rebirth of Belgium had begun. . . .
" You are going to America, Herr Hunt ? " the Ger-
mans asked at the last sentry post. " Gute Reise, gluck-
liche Reise, auf Wiedersetin!"
The car moved forward again. At the back of a little
Flemish church, surrounded with graveyard crosses
swimming in murk and mist, I caught sight of a greater
cross and an image of the agonized Christ — the familiar
symbol of our common humanity. On that dark day
it seemed peculiarly the symbol of Belgium — the little
land which has suffered so much, but whose moral
triumph is sure ; the land which has been crucified, dead,
and buried, but from which a free and united people must
rise, or else life is a mockery. . . . The vague shape
of the shrine faded in the dusk as the last sentries opened
the frontier barriers and stepped aside to let me into free
and neutral Holland.
" Good evening, mynheer," called a Dutch officer in
the quaint, sing-song dialect of North Brabant. " Have
you something to show to the customs inspector this
evening? "
And as Pierre de Weert, prince of chauffeurs, fumbled
326 AMERICA AND BELGIUM
with numbed fingers at the straps of my luggage, he
lifted his face, and gazing through the dusk toward the
country we had just left, sadly spoke my valedictory:
" Monsieur, vous avez quitte la belle Belgique — you have
left our beautiful Belgium ! "
APPENDIX I
THREE FAMOUS SOCIALISTS
This account was published in the Outlook of January
26, 1916, after later utterances of Liebknecht had gone
far beyond the words here recorded. The following is
reprinted from the Outlook of Wednesday, April 12, 1916.
IN its issue of February 17, 1916, La Bataille, the syndi-
calist Paris daily, published a translation of the article
which appeared in the Outlook of January 26, 1916, on
Liebknecht, Kautsky, and Bernstein. The French paper
justly said that these were " the three German Socialists
best authorized to express opinions on the general situa-
tion in Germany and on the attitude of German workmen
in the world conflict."
In its issue of March 2 La Bataille states that it has
learned that Bernstein and Kautsky published in the Berlin
Vorw'drts of February 27 a strong protest, categorically
denying the affirmations of the Outlook's representative, as
follows :
We have never seen the Outlook's representative and have
expressed ourselves in such terms to no one, for we have
been made to say the contrary to what seems to us just and
necessary to say.
We have searched our file of Vorw'drts, and especially
the issue of February 27, without discovering the above
denial. Again in its issue of March 12 La Bataille quotes
the Brunswick Socialist organ, Volksfreund, as printing the
following letter, dated February 27, from Dr. Liebknecht:
327
328 APPENDIX
I have never been interviewed by a representative of the
Outlook. My opinions are known and decided opinions.
That which the Outlook's correspondent makes me to say is
contrary to these opinions and — on certain points — to the
facts.
La Bataille is mystified. In its issues of March 2 and
12 it discusses editorially the controversy between the Out-
look and the three German Socialists. From these editorials
we translate and combine the following paragraphs which
give a fair representation of the not unnatural mystification
of La Bataille:
The Outlook of New York has a reputation for accuracy.
As an indication of this we need only to remind our readers
of the interview it obtained and published with Sazonoff
[the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs]. That interview
has received the seal of approval from the most com-
petent critics. Moreover, the opinions which Liebknecht,
Kautsky, and Bernstein expressed, according to the anony-
mous correspondent of the Outlook, are so plausible and
reasonable, according to our view, that they form the only
explanation which can serve as an excuse for the conduct
of the German Socialists [the italics are La Bataille' s]. . . .
We propose to send the present issue of La Bataille to the
Editors of the Outlook, inviting them by letter to give us
the reply of their correspondent [to the alleged denial of
Dr. Liebknecht and his colleagues]. . . . When we have
received a reply from New York, we shall be able to tell
our readers whether the correspondent of the Outlook has
indulged in a hoax, or whether there is some misunderstand-
ing regarding the meaning of the word interview. . . .
We published the three interviews because they seemed to
us to exactly coincide with the actual facts. Investigation
confirms us in our belief that in several respects the
language attributed to Karl Liebknecht by the American
journalist corresponds, word for word, with statements
which we have read in other places from the pen of
Liebknecht himself. . . . We cannot at present regard
as satisfactory the meager statement of Karl Liebknecht
that the Outlook interview is contrary to his opinions and —
on certain points — to the facts.
APPENDIX 329
These denials of the three German Socialists raise issues
far more interesting than that of veracity. The issue of
veracity, however, we are ready to meet. The Outlook
stands squarely behind the correspondent responsible for
its account of the interview with the three German So-
cialists.
From this correspondent we have received the following
statement :
" The interview with Liebknecht, Kautsky, and Bern-
stein, published in your issue of January 26, 1916, took
place as described. Liebknecht I saw in the private office
in which he does his work as a member of the Reichstag.
Kautsky and Bernstein I interviewed in a private apart-
ment-house in Berlin. The gentlemen have a right to
change their minds, and of course they may say that the
interviews misrepresent them. At the time I wrote the
article I believed, and I still believe, that it is an accurate
account of what took place."
The Outlook withheld the name of its correspondent for
two good and sufficient reasons. The first had reference
to the welfare of the three Socialists interviewed; the sec-
ond cannot be explained until after the termination of the
war. It should be said here that the interviews were not
published in the Outlook until Dr. Liebknecht's reported
utterances in the Reichstag went so far beyond those given
in the text of our interview with him that we felt that its
publication would not in any way jeopardize his safety.
That we did not overestimate the possibility of personal
danger to Dr. Liebknecht arising from the publication of
his views may be judged by the remarks which Dr. Lieb-
knecht himself made to an American university professor
of high standing. We reported these remarks as follows in
our issue of March 29 :
Dr. Liebknecht said that the position which he had taken
in opposition to Germany's action had put him in personal
330 APPENDIX
danger, so much so that it was not beyond the bounds of
possibility that he might at any time disappear and never
be heard of again. As he said this he significantly drew
his hand across his neck, and then added that the fortunes
of an individual were of no consequence.
The more interesting issues raised by the denials of Lieb-
knecht, Kautsky, and Bernstein are clearly indicated by
the following quotation from La Bataille:
One thing is certain: German Socialists of the Opposi-
tion have not taken into account the interest with which the
entire world awaits what they decide to say frankly and
without reservation on questions of principle and tactics,
and they should not leave their comrades in other countries
in doubt as to their attitude regarding the German Govern-
ment and the Social Democratic majority.
Although the German Socialists failed to make them-
selves felt on August i, 1914, is it still " just and necessary "
(to use the words attributed to Kautsky and Bernstein by
La Bataille) that their leaders fail to express them-
selves frankly until the end of the war? Is it "just and
necessary " for their leaders to say one thing in their
studies and another thing in their despatches relayed to
us by the Wolff Telegraphic Bureau ?
Is it " just and necessary " that they allow themselves
to be pictured as loyal supporters of the Government, or,
at worst, as harmless members of a purely vocal Oppo-
sition? Is it "just and necessary" for them to dodge
what La Bataille indicates is the world-wide interest
in their attitude regarding the German Government and
the Social Democratic majority?
The Outlook agrees with La Bataille that the next
word on these subjects belongs to Kautsky, Bernstein,
and Liebknecht, and wishes that it might have a frank,
direct, and uncensored expression of their views. We
content ourselves with adding that our correspondent, whose
APPENDIX 33i
interviews with the three influential German Socialists have
become the subject of an international discussion, is a
highly educated and thoroughly trustworthy American who
has lived in Europe and is in sincere sympathy with inter-
national Socialism.
APPENDIX II
PRESS AND POST
IN many of their official dealings with the Belgians the
Germans insisted on speaking the German language, al-
though many Belgians cannot understand a word of Ger-
man, while the officers concerned practically all know
French.
Belgians could send no telegrams; they could use no
telephones; they could mail no letters, and they could not
travel without buying a pass at the German Pass Bureaus.
Belgian newspapers were managed by German agents, or
else were heavily censored.
In Antwerp as a means of restoring order and confidence
after the fall of the city, the German authorities wisely
agreed with the municipality that if the local newspapers
would resume publication they should be permitted to print
uncensored the official despatches of all the belligerents, and
that the censor might excise but would not add to editorial
or news matter. Five newspapers then appeared. At first
they were allowed to print references to King Albert, Queen
Elizabeth, and the Belgian army and government; and the
Reuter official despatches regularly appeared side by side
with those of the Wolff Bureau.
After about a month, however, the censor began to tamper
with the Reuter despatches. Later he demanded that. arti-
cles dictated by the German authorities appear without com-
332 APPENDIX
ment in the Antwerp press, and when the five newspapers
drew up a formal complaint which they submitted to the
censor and which he in turn forwarded to Brussels, he
punished them by suspending them for one week. The
memorandum requested that the German authorities observe
the conditions under which the Antwerp papers had re-
sumed publication, but the request was refused, and the
five newspapers ceased publication.
The most interesting newspaper in Belgium is published
without the permission of the Germans, and has puzzled
and exasperated them to this day. It is called La Libre
Belgique, and is printed and distributed to its subscribers
in spite of a price of fifty thousand francs set upon the
head of its editor or editors, and in spite of unusually
severe sentences imposed upon several of its vendors who
have been caught in the act of distributing it. Rumor says
that the paper is printed in an obscure garage by means of
an automobile motor ; its price is " elastic — from zero to
infinity," and with delicious audacity it declares its tele-
graphic address to be " Kommandantur, Brussels." It ap-
pears at irregular intervals, but usually once every week or
fortnight.
In the Wiertz Museum in Brussels there is a horrible
painting called " Napoleon in Hell," showing the Corsican
haunted by the spirits of those he had slain. After the
execution of Miss Edith Cavell, La Libre Belgique printed
a travesty of this painting in which the Kaiser's face was
shown instead of Napoleon's, and among the spirits haunt-
ing him the figure of Miss Cavell.
Another issue of La Libre Belgique reproduced a cleverly
patched photograph of Governor-General von Bissing sit-
ting in his private office, reading the proscribed journal.
Beneath the picture was a note, " Our dear Governor, dis-
heartened by reading the lies of the censored newspapers,
seeks for truth in La Libre Belgique!'
APPENDIX 333
APPENDIX III
PUBLIC CHARITY AND EXCHANGE
Reprinted from the first Annual Report of the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium, October 31, 1915.
IT appeared at the outset of relief measures that not only
would the destitute of Belgium have to be regarded as a
ward of the world's charity, but that even much of the food
for the well-to-do, owing to the complete breakdown of
Belgian internal finance, would have to be provided from
external charity. . . . The first financial activity of the
Relief Directors was therefore to set up various economic
cycles whereby food sold to those who could pay might be
interpreted into gold values abroad. Ultimately, approval
was obtained for the Commission to conduct exchange opera-
tions through the belligerent lines, and considerable amounts
of money owing to Belgium have been collected abroad
from individuals, contra-payment being made in Belgium
out of paper moneys received from sales of food. These
operations relieve the strain on the Commission income and
enable the recipient to keep clear of charity. The total of
such remittances has been £562,740 95. nd. from over
12,000 different persons. The second step of this na-
ture was to borrow certain sums from banks abroad,
amounting to £600,000, contra-liability being taken in Bel-
gium. The third step was to undertake the payment of con-
siderable sums in Belgium on behalf of the Belgian Govern-
ment at Le Havre. At the time of the occupation, certain
sums were due from the National Exchequer to various
institutions; these sums have now been received by the
Commission from the Belgian Government and, in turn,
paid to the institutions concerned out of local receipts from
food sales.
334 APPENDIX
While the whole of these operations are simply in the
nature of commercial exchange, they have an indirect
benevolent aspect, for they not only enable a large number
of persons to subsist without charity, but also make it pos-
sible to reduce the general load upon the Commission by
rendering the provisioning of the better-to-do classes a com-
mercial operation affording an incidental profit applicable to
benevolence.
APPENDIX IV
INCREDIBLY SMALL EXPENSES
Reprinted from the Report of the Millers' Belgian Relief
Movement, conducted by the Northwestern Miller through
its editor, William C. Edgar, Minneapolis, Minn.,
OWING to the fact that all officials and directors and a
very large proportion of the staff of the Commission serve
without pay, the expenses of operation are incredibly small,
and probably unparalleled in this respect by any charitable
organization in the world.
From October 22nd to March 6th, during which period
purchases were effected amounting to £3,000,000, the gen-
eral expenses of the London office, including cables, postage,
salaries, traveling, printing, stationery, accountants' and
auditors' fees and sundries, were but £5,200; the expenses
of the Rotterdam and Brussels branches were but a trifle
more than this amount.
APPENDIX 335
APPENDIX V
GIFTS OF SERVICE
Reprinted from the first Annual Report of the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium, October 31,
THE chartering and management of an entire fleet of
vessels, together with agency control practically throughout
the world, has been carried out for the Commission quite
free of the usual charges by large transportation firms who
offered these concessions in the cause of humanity. Banks
generally have given their exchange services and have paid
the full rate of interest on deposits ; insurance has been facili-
tated by the British Government Insurance Commissioners ;
and the firms who fix the insurance have subscribed the
equivalent of their fees. Harbor dues and port charges
have been remitted at many points, and stevedoring firms
have made important concessions in rates and have afforded
other generous services. In Holland exemption from har-
bor dues and telegraph tolls has been granted, and rail
transport into Belgium provided free of charge. The total
value of these Dutch concessions is estimated at 147,824
guilders. The German military authorities in Belgium
itself have abolished custom and canal dues on all Com-
mission imports, have reduced railway rates one-half, and
on canals and railways they give right-of-way to Commis-
sion foodstuffs wherever there is need.
APPENDIX VI
THE FIRST SUPPLIES
THE first supplies consisted of 6,000 tons of cereals,
1,000 tons of rice, and 3,000 tons of peas and beans,
336 APPENDIX
bought in London by Millard Shaler for the account of
the city of Brussels. The next consisted of cargoes of
grain, lying in the mouth of the Scheldt at Ter Neuzen
and belonging to Belgians. These were appropriated by
the Commission and returned to Belgium.
At the same time Brussels secured a lot of 5,000 tons of
wheat, belonging to the provisions requisitioned at Antwerp,
which the Germans " loaned " to the Belgian Committee
for milling and distribution in Brussels, Charleroi, Liege,
and Verviers. This was on November i6th. Meanwhile
the Belgian appeal was spreading throughout the world.
APPENDIX VII
EARLY FOOD SHIPMENTS
THE report of the Commission for November, 1914, shows
the ships " Coblenz " and " Iris " from London, received at
Rotterdam on the first and second respectively ; five lighters
of wheat from Hansweert, received on the second ; the ships
" Jan Blockx I " and " Tellus " from London, received on
the ninth; ten lighters of wheat and flour from Hansweert
and three lighters of wheat from Ter Neuzen, received on
the ninth ; the " Tremorvah " from Halifax on the fif-
teenth ; the " Gramsbergen " from Liverpool on the eigh-
teenth ; the " Massapequa " from New York on the twenty-
first, and the " Jan Blockx II " from London on the
twenty-fourth — a total of 26,470 tons of food for the first
month of operations, worth about $1,021,267.
APPENDIX 337
APPENDIX VIII
FLEMISH
EDUCATED Flemings are bilingual, like the Galileans of
Christ's day. They speak either French or Flemish with
equal fluency, although a guttural quality and local idioms
sometimes disfigure the former. For political and cultural
reasons many of them cling to their native Flemish. It
is the common speech : the language of the people of Flan-
ders. When written, it is practically the same as the Dutch
— a low Germanic language — but the spoken language dif-
fers from the Dutch in many particulars.
The Flemish Movement is not a separatist movement,
as is commonly supposed in America. It is a democratic,
and in my opinion a just assertion of the predominant influ-
ence of the Flemish stock in Belgium. During the war the
Flemish Movement can have no political significance, for
the Flemings are as loyal as any other portion of the
people to the ideal of a free and united Belgium.
To an American ear the language of Flanders is like Old
English resurrected from the tomes. One seems to hear
" Piers Ploughman " all about one. It is a warty, hard-
fisted, tough-muscled language which has been out in the
weather until it has got well sunburned ; a splendid language
for oratory — and profanity !
Almost every place and every thing in Flemish Belgium
has two or more names. Antwerp is " Antwerpen " in
Flemish, " Anvers " (please pronounce the final s) in
French. The River Scheldt is " Schelde " in Flemish,
" 1'Escaut " in French. Mechlin or Malines is " Mechelen "
in Flemish, "Malines" in French. Ghent is "Gent" in
Flemish, " Gand " in French. " Mons " is French, of
course, but its Flemish name is " Bergen."
338 APPENDIX
APPENDIX IX
THE POOR
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
THE actual work of food distribution and the care of the
destitute was done entirely by the Belgians. Twenty-five
or thirty thousand men and women volunteers throughout
the country were engaged in this splendid task. In each
commune there was a local committee, working under the
direction of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the
National Relief Committee; there was a Provisioning De-
partment to each of these committees, rationing and selling
the imported foodstuffs to the Belgian population, who paid
either in money or in food checks given them by the
Benevolent Department ; and there was the Benevolent De-
partment feeding, clothing, and housing the destitute, pro-
viding medical attention, organizing work for the unem-
ployed, paying unemployment benefits, and so keeping alive
and as well as possible, 2,750,000 unfortunate men, women,
and children.
The total number of persons in Belgium receiving some
form of relief it is impossible to determine. The relief
afforded through the Financial Relief Department, together
with the very large and generous support to workpeople
being given by employers in practically gratuitous wage-
allowances, and the widespread individual charity through-
out Belgium save a great number from falling in the last
resort on the Communal Committees. Some insight into the
situation is afforded by three examples. In the Capital, and
therefore largely residential city of Brussels, prior to the
supplemental grants, between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 ra-
tions were served monthly from the Canteens, indicating
APPENDIX
339
from 25 per cent to 30 per cent of the population as being
thus directly relieved. The numbers who are saved from
this form of relief through the operations of the indirect
services and the large amount of personal charity, it is
impossible to estimate. In the province of Liege, a typical
industrial section, out of a population of about 900,000 there
are some 450,000 persons, or about 50 per cent, being
assisted by some of the above services, and there are esti-
mated to be 40,000 more who receive help through other
agencies such as the " Financial Relief Department." A
typical agricultural province such as Luxembourg shows
only about 20 per cent of the population dependent upon
benevolence. A study of the distribution and amount of
the " Allowances " described above indicates that about
700,000 families are receiving this form of assistance. Alto-
gether this category, together with those wholly supported
on the Canteens, would be estimated on the low side at
2,750,000 persons. To this must be added a further 500,-
ooo who are saved from the care of the Local Committees
through the operations of Financial Relief measures. It
may be repeated that many of those being assisted still have
some resources of their own — for instance, the general opera-
tion of the coal mines one day or sometimes two days per
week might conceivably enable the worker himself to live,
but his dependents would be helpless.
APPENDIX X
BELGIAN COMMITTEES
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 50, 1915.
THE organization by which detailed distribution is accom-
plished can best be understood if it is conceived that there
340 APPENDIX
have been created 2,500 different local committees, one in
each principal commune, which will be referred to hereafter
as " The Communal Distribution Committees." These com-
mittees are in many instances headed by the Burgomaster
and embrace other communal officials, as well as volunteers,
although in some instances they are entirely composed of
non-official volunteers. In order to secure consolidation of
control and simplification of relations with these multitudi-
nous committees, a federal system has been set up, by which
these Communal Committees are represented in Regional
Committees and these Regional Committees, in turn, repre-
sented in Provincial Committees. The Provincial Com-
mittees are the principal centers of stimulative activity and,
while they have decided autonomy in provincial matters,
questions which affect the entire country are decided by
meetings of delegates from these Provincial Committees,
and these delegates, together with a small executive body,
comprise the working membership of the Comite National.
The Commission for Relief in Belgium forms, jointly with
the Comite National, the executive control, and it is also
represented by delegates on the Provincial Committees, and
the whole structure so interlinks that any separate descrip-
tion of functions would only tend to confuse.
Apart from these executive functions, the Commission is
itself charged separately with the international guarantees
and the elaborate stipulations contained therein, which
necessitate that the foodstuffs shall remain in the possession
of the Commission, and the control of the transportation
and warehouses thus falls on its members. Furthermore,
the Commission is under international obligation to main-
tain rigid justice in distribution.
APPENDIX 341
APPENDIX XI
THE MILLERS' BELGIAN RELIEF MOVEMENT
The Northwestern Miller, an admirable trade paper,
solicited from its clients, through its editor, William C.
Edgar, of Minneapolis, a cargo of 275,500 sacks of flour,
beans, peas, oatmeal, and barley, valued at about $510,000.
Mr. Edgar personally accompanied the Millers' Ship to
Rotterdam and then came into Belgium to oversee the
distribution of the gifts. He has recorded his satisfaction
with the work of the Commission in his report to his clients,
entitled " The Millers' Belgian Relief Movement," Minne-
apolis, 1915.
APPENDIX XII
THE PRIEST
THROUGHOUT Belgium the priest is an important character.
A few of the cities and most of the towns are Catholic, and
the priest is a political and social as well as a religious
director. In the towns and villages he is often more im-
portant than the Burgomaster. He is accustomed to relieve
distress, and in the volunteer organizations through which
the work of the Commission for Relief in Belgium is done
the parish priest and the whole Catholic hierarchy, with the
Cardinal-Archbishop at their head, are most important ele-
ments.
342 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XIII
ANTE-BELLUM BELGIUM
UNDER the symbol lay an ocean of feeling deep as life
itself. Belgium had always been hospitable to the Ger-
mans. Antwerp before the war might almost have been
called a German port. The German school was the best
school in the city; German society there was considered as
good as Belgian society; the German Lutheran Church was
supported by practically all Belgians who were not Roman
Catholics; throughout Belgium, German was a legal lan-
guage, on a par with French and Flemish, and if one de-
sired one could require that a case at law be tried in Ger-
man. In the eastern parts of Belgium were thousands of
Belgian citizens who spoke no language but German. In
the province of Antwerp some fifteen thousand residents
were recorded as speaking only German. Belgians admired
German efficiency. They felt a certain contempt for repub-
lican France; they thought her effete and irreligious. The
Catholics were especially severe on their republican neigh-
bors to the south, and it should not be forgotten that when
the Germans demanded the right to send their armies down
the Meuse there were not lacking one or two Catholic
politicians who felt that the country should give in and
should permit the invasion with a formal protest.
APPENDIX XIV
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
ART played a subordinate part in the work of the Antwerp
committees, except in the Canton of Moll. There it reigned
supreme. The president of the Cantonal Committee — Moll is
APPENDIX 343
the largest Canton in Belgium — was Jakob Smits. German
generals, who admired Smits as an artist, gave him privileges
enjoyed by few other Belgian citizens. At one time he
appeared to be free to go and come from Holland when he
chose, and in Holland, as in Belgium, he received unusual
consideration. At the instance of Mr. Louis Franck, Mr.
Smits frequently wrung concessions for imports from the
Dutch Foreign Office, such as no one else could obtain.
The Dutch Minister of Commerce and Labor was a
friend of Smits. On one occasion, I am told, the artist
presented himself before the Minister and demanded the
right to buy in Holland a quantity of flour and various
cattle foods, the export of which at that time was pro-
hibited by the Dutch. The Minister politely refused. Smits
persisted. The Minister was obdurate. Smits argued. The
Minister regretted, but could make no exception. Smits
stormed. " I will kill myself," he shouted, " if you do not
give me that permission at once ! I will kill myself here in
your private office ! My blood will flow on your carpet !
Here ! Now ! " The Minister, knowing that he was dealing
with an artist, surrendered, and Smits got the permission.
His returns from Holland were always in the nature of
triumphal entries, and the Canton of Moll waxed fat.
APPENDIX XV
FIRST AID
FIFTEEN soup kitchens were feeding the poor from sup-
plies laid up in anticipation of the siege. Ten local com-
mittees in the greater city were distributing assistance in
kind to necessitous Belgians who had never been inscribed
at the official Bureau of Charities (le Bureau de Bienfai-
sance). Private charity had established cheap restaurants,
344 APPENDIX
where good food could be got at low prices. There was
an incorporated bank for loans with a capital of 250,000
francs, in response to the imperative demands of small
tradespeople. The Civil Volunteers, for the assistance of
the families of soldiers who had fought and died for the
country, had assisted about 5,000 families. Side by side
with these newer charities were the older homes, refuges,
and hospitals, enlarged to care for the floods of those
requiring assistance.
All this work had been in the hands of the local relief
committees. Outside of the city proper, the people of the
fortress had been supplied with food, as long as it lasted,
and with financial assistance.
A special machinery had even been set up by the Belgian
Government to provide for the chaos which followed the
fall of the city. While King Albert and his ministers were
in Antwerp they nominated an Intercommunal Commission,
consisting of the most prominent citizens of Antwerp and
the communes in the fortress, so that when the city fell
there should be a provisional Belgian administration, in
addition to the Permanent Deputation of the Provincial
Council. Deputy Louis Franck was president of the Inter-
communal Commission.
APPENDIX XVI
BAR-LE-DUC
AN odd geographical feature of the arrondissement of
Turnhout is that it has an enclave in the Dutch province
of North Brabant. This enclave, the commune of Bar-le-
Duc, is like a Belgian island in a Dutch sea, except that
the sea is swampy Campine — a compound of sand and
purple heather. The Germans cannot invade it, for to do
APPENDIX 345
so would be to violate the neutrality of Holland. So the
2,500 inhabitants of Bar-le-Duc fly the Belgian flag, employ
Belgian police and guards, post letters at a Belgian post
office, and cheer for King Albert and Queen Elizabeth,
with no fear of retaliatory Zeppelin raids or Uhlan visits.
APPENDIX XVII
INTERLOCKING ORGANIZATIONS
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
WITH the partial recovery from complete prostration, the
admirable organizing and administrative powers of the Bel-
gians themselves have recovered to vigorous initiative and
executive action. Since October, local relief Committees
have been organized in practically every commune, and
there has been created over these Committees a federal sys-
tem of District and Provincial Committees with the Comite
National at the apex. The relation of this structure to the
Commission per se is one of joint endeavor, and the mem-
bership of the Americans in all these Committees entirely
interlocks the organization.
APPENDIX XVIII
FOOD REQUIREMENTS
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30,
THE amount and character of foodstuffs required has
altered from time to time, due to the exhaustion of native
346 APPENDIX
supplies, or seasonal causes, and the monthly consumption
now being provided is as follows:
Tons
Wheat (or equivalent in flour) 60,000
Maize 20,000
Rice 7,500
Peas and beans 4,000
Bacon and lard 6,000
Sundries
The approximate cost is about $7,500,000 per month for
Belgium alone.
Reprinted from the first Annual Report of the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium, October 31, 1915.
The total, in metric tons, of commodities delivered dur-
ing the year was:
Purchased Gifts in Kind Totals
Wheat 508,112 23,166 SS1^^
Flour 108,575 45>346 I53.92i
Maize 1 10,487 8,744 1 19,231
Rice 72,594 2,406 75.000
Beans and peas 28,758 3,652 32,410
Bacon, lard, and meat 29,149 837 29,986
Potatoes 14,943 3,415 18,358
Sundries 17^59 8,186 25,345
Clothing and miscellaneous . 775 2,548 3>323
Totals 890,552 98,300 988,852
The above contains a total of 121,136 tons shipped to
northern France, and stocks in Rotterdam on October 3ist.
APPENDIX 347
APPENDIX XIX
COFFEE
AN interesting inter-provincial trade was the purchase
by Mr. Edouard Bunge, on behalf of the National Relief
Committee, of a large stock of valorization coffee lying in
warehouses at Antwerp. This coffee was the property of
the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. Through a representative
of the Government of Brazil permission was secured from
the German authorities to release the coffee to the Belgian
Committees, and accordingly it was apportioned among
the nine Provincial Committees.
APPENDIX XX
A CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY
THE idea of a co-operative society is typically Belgian.
The Socialist co-operative experiments of a quarter of a
century ago, notably " La Maison du Peuple " in Brussels
an 1 " Vooruit " in Ghent, have had countless imitators.
But political lines of cleavage are always observed, so that
in Antwerp, for example, we had Socialist, Liberal, and
Catholic co-operative bakeries.
J. Seebohm Rowntree has an interesting chapter on Bel-
gian co-operatives in his book Land and Labor, published
by Macmillan, London, 1910.
In my opinion this book is the most adequate account
in English of Belgian industrial and social conditions before
the war.
348 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXI
THE NATIONAL RELIEF COMMITTEE
ITS first patrons were the American Minister, Mr. Brand
Whitlock, and the Spanish Minister, the Marquis of Vil-
lalobar. In April, 1915, Jonkheer de Weede, Dutch Minister
at Havre, became a patron of the Committee. Its president
is Ernest Solvay; vice-presidents, Jean Jadot and L. van
der Rest; members, Count Cicogna, Baron Coppee, P.
Dansette, Chevalier de Bauer, G. de Laveleye, Count Jean
de Merode, "fimile Francqui, Baron A. Goffinet, Baron
Janssen, Emmanuel Janssen, Baron Lambert, Alfred Orban,
L. Cousin, Louis Solvay, Josse Allard, F. M. Philippson,
General Thys; two American citizens resident in Brussels
• — D. Heineman and W. Hulse; and secretaries E. van
Elewyck and F. van Bree. The presidents and vice-presi-
dents of the Provincial Committees make part of the Na-
tional Committee.
The Executive Committee consists of Emile Francqui,
president; Josse Allard, Count Cicogna, L. Cousin, Cheva-
lier de Wouters d'Oplinter, D. Heineman, W. Hulse,
Emmanuel Janssen, Michel Levie, Louis Solvay, and secre-
taries E. van Elewyck and F. van Bree.
The National Committee and the Provincial Committees
are divided into two departments, a commercial depart-
ment (d' Alimentation) and a benevolent department (de
Secours). Under the benevolent department are five im-
portant divisions: to provide I, Money; 2, Food; 3, Cloth-
ing and Shoes; 4, Work; 5, Houses and other buildings.
There are committees for the Aid and Protection of
Refugees, the Aid and Protection of Families of Officers
and Under-Officers Deprived of their Income by reason of
the War, Aid and Protection of Belgian Doctors and Phar-
macists, Aid and Protection of Artists, Aid and Protection
APPENDIX 349
of Children and Orphans of War, Aid and Protection of
the Homeless, Aid and Protection of Damaged Churches,
Aid and Protection of the Unemployed, Aid and Protection
of Foreigners, Aid and Protection of Lace Makers, a spe-
cial Commission for Temporary Houses and the Work of
Reconstruction, a Belgian Commission for Information for
Prisoners of War and the Interned, a Central Committee
for the Aid of Invalids of War, a Canteen for Prisoners of
War, and a Belgian National League against Tuberculosis.
The Belgian National Committee is patron of all these
channels for charity.
APPENDIX XXII
THE CONTRIBUTION OF WAR
THE contribution of war — $96,000,000 per year — is levied
on Belgium through the Permanent Deputations of the
Provincial Councils. It is not paid in gold, but in paper,
for there is no gold.
It is interesting to note in this connection that the total
Belgian budget in peace time is from $120,000,000 to $160,-
000,000 per year.
APPENDIX XXIII
FINANCE
WITH the conclusion of peace, the final adjustment of the
foregoing financial operations is fairly simple. The sums
borrowed by the provincial authorities from the Societe
Generate, and by the individual municipalities, will be repaid
in the restored currency of the National Bank of Belgium,
350 APPENDIX
while the Belgian Government will probably take over and
redeem the Societe Gener ale's currency, since the Societt
will have to be regarded as having acted for the Belgian
Government in its absence.
But the fiat money of the Societe Generate bears no re-
lation to the sums expended abroad each month by the
Commission for Relief in Belgium on behalf of the Bel-
gian people. In the report of the Commission for June
30, 1915, Mr. Hoover writes:
" The purchase of foodstuffs abroad must necessarily be
made with gold, or gold value, and these foodstuffs when
re-sold in Belgium are paid for in local paper money. All
metallic money and gold reserves have disappeared in Bel-
gium, and these local emergency currencies issued by bank-
ing houses, municipalities, &c., are obviously inconvertible
into gold. Moreover, the import of these notes through the
Allied lines is prohibited, and the export of any form of
securities from Belgium is also prohibited. If there were no
economic or legal restrictions on exchange, the Provisioning
Department, with a moderate working capital, would revolve
upon itself. As it stands, however, not only has the cur-
rency received in Belgium to be interpreted into gold, but
also it must be returned to circulation in Belgium, otherwise
a large part of the circulating media would be absorbed by
the Provisioning Department, and a further cause of dis-
tress added to the many already existing. From the outset,
the organization has accepted all forms of currency at the
gold value of the Belgian franc, interpreted into dollars or
sterling. These various paper moneys are therefore given
stability and circulation throughout the country. The rate
of exchange fixed has been at Frs. 25.40 to the i sterling.
Belgian exchange is to-day quoted in the neutral markets
of Holland at a ratio which would be equivalent to about
25 per cent depreciation of Belgian money. The Com-
APPENDIX 35i
mission, however, has believed that if they were to follow
any other course than to maintain the gold value it would
again add infinitely to the misery in the country, because it
would be necessary to advance the price of foodstuffs as
the exchange rose, and there is no corresponding ameliora-
tion in wages, income, or other economic balances in Bel-
gium."
APPENDIX XXIV
WHEAT AND FLOUR
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
THE bulk of the Commission's imports of breadstuffs
have been in the form of wheat and maize. Considerable
latitude is exercised by the Provincial Committees in the
manner in which flour is prepared in the mills. Until re-
cently it has been the general practice to mill wheat into
flour containing 90 per cent of the whole, the remaining
10 per cent of bran being sold for fodder. Gradually the
various Provincial Committees are adopting the Commis-
sion's recommendation of 80 per cent milling, and some
Provincial Committees have milled from 10 to 12 per cent
of maize with the wheat, or have availed themselves of
supplies of American corn-meal to produce such a mixture.
In certain cases the pure wheat flour imported has been
mixed with the flour produced as above. Much discussion
has taken place as to the effect upon the population of bread
produced by this high percentage of milling, but a careful
study fails to detect any deleterious results. Wide differ-
ences of opinion have existed in Belgium as well as abroad
as to the economics of importing wheat flour as distin-
352 APPENDIX
guished from wheat. In certain sections milling facilities
have not been available, and there has therefore been no
question as to the necessity of importing white flour.
Furthermore, certain sections are destitute of foodstuff
for cattle, and prefer to receive wheat in order that they
may have the by-product. The difference in food-value in
bread from wheat milled to 90 per cent, as distinguished
from the ordinary milling of about 70 per cent to 75 per
cent, does not seem to have been sufficient to warrant the
difference in the cost of the two products. The occupa-
tion given to Belgian mills and their workmen and the
useful production of fodder are all factors which have to
be weighed. Moreover, experience in baking has enabled
an improvement to be made in the quality of the bread,
and there is now a general consensus of opinion in Belgium
that the import of wheat is more economical and advisable
than that of flour.
APPENDIX XXV
DISTRIBUTION
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30,
THE method of the detailed distribution of breadstuffs
varies in different provinces. Originally the Communal
Committees issued the flour from their communal ware-
houses to accredited bakers, and these bakers were required
to submit lists of customers for approval to the Communal
Committee, who then issued supplies on a ratio per capita
of the bakers' customers. The per capita allowance of
flour has usually been at the rate of 250 grammes per
customer, and from this amount a baker in turn normally
APPENDIX 353
produces 325 grammes of bread, a differential being made
to the baker between the charge made to him for the flour
and the price at which he sells the bread, sufficient to cover
the necessary cost of his subsidiary constituents and the em-
ployment of his labor. Latterly a system has been proposed
by the Commission, and is now in use in several Belgium
provinces, by which the local Committees deliver the flour
to bakers under contracts which provide that 1.35 kilos of
good bread must be produced from i kilo of flour, the baker
being paid 8 centimes per kilo for baking the flour. The
bakers, in this case, deliver the bread to an established
depot, and each family must secure their bread from the
nearest sectional depot. There is thus a better check on the
baker as to quantity delivered, and a better guarantee of
quality. The adult ration is, as before, 325 grammes of
bread per diem.
APPENDIX XXVI
SOUP RECIPES
THE soup was made from recipes furnished by the city,
with the following as a standard base, for 2,000 persons:
100 kilograms peas or beans
^/2 " bacon
5 leeks
150 potatoes
5 onions
354 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXVII
SELLING GIFT GOODS
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
As described under the Provisioning Department it be-
came necessary, as an administrative measure, to sell all
gift food, which thus falls into the general stream of sup-
plies to the Provisioning Department. The moneys realized
therefor are handed over to the Benevolent Department,
and from that department are given out to the Local Com-
mittees in the form of cash subsidies, to enable them to
purchase foodstuffs from the general stream for supply
to the local destitute. Initially, upon the formation of the
Commission, it was intended, and an effort was made, to
distribute the actual food so generously contributed into
the hands of these Communal Committees throughout Bel-
gium, in order that they might in turn distribute the actual
gifts direct to the destitute. It was quickly found that,
from the enormous size of the problem, this was wholly
impracticable as a matter of administration. The gifts in
actual food were of irregular character and irregular ar-
rival, and any given canteen dependent on this source might
be supplied with an ample amount of flour one week and
the next week have to subsist on beans. Furthermore,
the distribution of an actual gift cargo throughout some
2,500 different communes would involve a complete dupli-
cation of the system of transportation alongside the dis-
tribution of foods provided for sale to those who had
means to pay. In any event, these irregular gifts must be
supplemented by purchases, and innumerable difficul-
ties arose over the inability to adjust gifts to actual
and particular necessities. Furthermore, large quantities
APPENDIX 355
of the material given was of the order of luxuries from a
Belgian point of view and had less food value than its
realization by sale to the wealthier classes would produce in
other commodities. With the confrontation of all these diffi-
culties the direct delivery of such charity could only be
done either by a radical change in policy or a very extended
and costly administration. It was therefore determined
that all gift food should, as stated above, be turned into
cash and the cash given to the Communal Relief Com-
mittees as subsidies. The prices at which this food has
been purchased by the Provisioning Department have been
determined on the basis of the replacement value of such
foodstuffs at the time they were given to the Commission.
No deduction for administration or expenses are made from
any gifts. This operation can be expressed from an
economic point of view as follows : — All sections of the
population must be fed, and as it is socially wrong to give
food to any who can pay, therefore, if one hundred sacks
of flour are a gift to the Commission, then roughly, as 25
per cent of the population is destitute, twenty-five of these
sacks will be consumed by the destitute. Seventy-five will
be sold at a profit and more than seventy-five sacks bought,
of which in turn the same proportion will be consumed by
the destitute and the balance will be sold, and the gift con-
tinues to revolve, with accretions from the more well-to-
do, until it is all absorbed by the destitute.
It has been believed by the Commission that an under-
standing of this arrangement by intelligent people could
not give rise to any remarks other than those of com-
mendation.
356 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXVIII
"AMERICAN SHOPS"
EARLY in the spring we opened an " American Shop "
for the sale of Commission merchandise, at number 51 rue
du Jardin des Arbaletriers. Miscellaneous products had
accumulated in our warehouses, and we had no adequate
means for distributing them. Some of them were staples,
such as oatmeal, but most of them were luxuries, fine
canned goods, candies, chocolate, crackers, cakes, and
other things which we could sell at a good price and the
profits from which we could turn into the benevolent
department.
The opening of the shop was made a formal event,
solemnized with toasts drunk in wine and with kindly
addresses in Flemish and in English by the Burgomaster
of the city of Antwerp. The little shop was overcrowded
from its beginning. Two kinds of goods were sold there:
a few staples, such as rice, corn-meal and oatmeal, and
the de luxe products which I have mentioned. Only limited
quantities of staple articles could be purchased by any one
buyer; sales to any but Belgian civilians were prohibited,
and a private detective ran down suspicious cases. The
personnel of the shop was part paid and part volunteer,
so that little expense was attached to it, and the things
sold were practically all to the profit of the benevolent
department. On the first day they amounted to 600 francs,
the second day 800, the third day 1,400, and from that they
climbed to a sum between 3,000 and 4,000 francs daily.
A second shop was opened in the rue Albert Grisar for
the sale of meat and lard imported by the Commission.
This was a greater success even than the first, but long
crowds stood waiting their turn day after day, until we
were compelled to rearrange our distribution and to ask
APPENDIX 357
the city authorities to distribute both meat and groceries
through little neighborhood shops and to check all sales by
a card system similar to that employed in our distribution
of flour and bread.
APPENDIX XXIX
THE CLOTHING WORKSHOP
A COMMITTEE of Belgian ladies, under the able direction
of Madame Alphonse de Montigny de Wael, Madame
Robert Osterrieth-Lippens, and Countess van de Werve de
Vorsselaere, had bought up the dry-goods supplies still in
Antwerp and opened a workshop in the theater Folies
Bergeres where clothing might be made and repaired. This
ouvoir became a Commission station, and the gift clothing
was sent directly from the docks to the workshop.
The city of Antwerp at first granted the ouvoir a
monthly subsidy of 50,000 francs. Later the National Com-
mittee assumed charge of its finances, and the workshop
was transferred from the theater to the magnificent sym-
phony hall on the rue d'Arenberg, belonging to the Societe
royale d'Harmonie. There was a similar but larger ouvoir
in Brussels at the Pole Nord, under direction of Madame
F. M. Philippson.
The stage of the Antwerp Harmonic was piled with
boxes of goods. Galleries and pit were spread with rows
of sewing machines and work tables, and the cloak room
was transformed into a steam and sulphur disinfecting
bath, where all materials, new and old, were taken apart
and thoroughly cleansed. Nine hundred girls and young
women worked under supervision in the warm, well-lighted
hall, while about three thousand older women were given
sewing to do at home. A group of cobblers in the hall
made and repaired shoes. All these workers were paid.
358 APPENDIX
From the central workshop, made goods and unmade
materials were sent throughout the Province; the latter to
sewing circles in the villages and towns.
In the Harmonle the girls were encouraged to sing at
their work. One afternoon each week a singing teacher
came and gave them lessons in the songs of their country.
On the occasions of our inspection trips, the great organ
behind the piles of boxes on the stage pealed a sonorous
welcome, and the sempstresses sang us the thrilling " Lion
of Flanders," the " Brabangonne," and once they greeted
us with a verse of the " Star Spangled Banner."
Except for this there was no singing in public. Belgian
anthems were under the German ban, and war songs
especially were proscribed. Children alone, being privileged
characters, chirruped about as they pleased, and occasion-
ally one caught a strange reminiscent echo of a familiar
chant.
Once it was the tune of " Tipperary," but the words
were new. A child, who had learned them from the British
Tommies in Antwerp during the siege, wrote them down
for me. At first I could make nothing of them, but care-
ful study and enunciation a la flamande, and one has the
famous chorus beginning, " It's a long way to Tipperary " :
'Ts se lorn wee ti parerie,
'Ts se lorn wee du koo,
'Ts se lorn wee tu parries,
Tot te zwede ke reino.
Dubei pikatilie, waarrie leskwee.
'Ts se lorn lorn wee peti pare,
Het myn sklatel.
APPENDIX 359
APPENDIX XXX
TEMPORARY HOUSES
As early as January, 1915, the National Relief Com-
mittee began an investigation of the damage to Belgian
property caused by the invasion of the Germans, but the
work was abruptly stopped by the military authorities, and
the Committee was informed that such an investigation
lay solely in the province of the occupying power.
Shelters, however, had to be built, even if there could
be no general investigation of the extent of the damage.
Belgian military engineers had done vast damage in put-
ting the land in a condition for defense. This was parti-
cularly the case about the fortress of Antwerp, where be-
fore the siege began, two wide belts of country were
cleared of forests, bushes, and dwellings, and where the
dykes had been cut to flood the low lands. Magnificent
castles and country houses were made heaps of ruins;
barbed wire entanglements and trenches cut through the sites
of hundreds of farm-houses, and in springtime bloody
waves of poppies, mixed with blue corn-flowers, flowed
over and under the abandoned defenses, or littered with
beauty what once were shaven lawns.
The ruin caused by German artillery and incendiaries
still further intensified the problem of housing. Hundreds
of towns in Belgium and thousands of isolated homesteads
all over the land had been burned and battered by the
invaders. In the villages and towns of the province of
Antwerp — not counting the cities of Antwerp and M alines
— 4,456 houses were completely destroyed, and 1,938 were
greatly damaged, so that at least 18,000 villagers were
homeless.
The communes most affected were those along the outer
ring of fortifications, such as Cruybeke, Tamise, Bornhem,
36o APPENDIX
Puers, Liezele, Breendonck, Thisselt, Willebroeck, Blaes-
velt, Waelhem, Duffel, Wavre-Sainte-Catherine, Koning-
shoyckt, Lierre, Kessel, and Schilde. Some villages had
been annihilated. Not even a cat remained.
By springtime the need was intense. In defiance of all
the laws of hygiene, and in most dangerous promiscuity,
returning refugees housed themselves in stables with the
animals, in cellar pits, or in the lee of old walls.
The Provincial Committee, therefore, set aside funds for
the repair or reconstruction of such houses as could
be rendered habitable, in whole or in part, and the con-
struction of temporary houses. Requests for such construc-
tions were received through the local relief committees,
and if approved, a commission consisting of three archi-
tects and a sanitary engineer planned the house and pro-
vided the estimates. The structures were single or group
houses, or communal barracks. In a few towns and vil-
ages the commission approved the construction of small
shops for retail marketing.
Brick for the walls and thick paper for the partitions
were the materials commonly used, since both could be
employed after the war in the construction of the perma-
nent building. Often it was possible to use part of the
bricks from the original building, and sometimes the old
foundations and cellar.
Labor and oversight were provided by the local relief
committee. The terrible state of unemployment made
such labor as this a veritable godsend.
The use of the ground was given to the Provincial Com-
mittee by the proprietor or the communal authorities.
The temporary house remained the legal property of the
Committee, and was liable to destruction on orders of the
military authorities, the State, or the province. The oc-
cupant paid the Committee a rental of five per cent, of the
cost, or, if indigent, he paid nothing. After the war, when
APPENDIX 361
the permanent structure is begun, the proprietor has the
right to buy of the Committee all the materials used in the
temporary structure, and the materials on the ground are
the property of the proprietor and not of the Committee.
The cost of these temporary houses is remarkably low.
Single structures run from 500 to 600 francs; groups of
houses, from 1,200 to 1,705 francs. Repairs of damaged
houses are made, as a rule, at a cost of less than 250
francs, on a basis of 40 francs per person.
APPENDIX XXXI
UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF
MUCH was left to the initiative of the communal com-
mittees, and sometimes this brought admirable results. In
the industrial commune of Willebroeck there were about
1,400 unemployed workmen out of a total population of
12,000. There was not enough work for all, so that the
number of working days during which a man had a right
to be employed varied according to the size of his family.
The men were then divided into shifts. It is an old Belgian
custom for groups of transient laborers to march about the
country under a leader who acts as spokesman for the men
and overseer for the employer, so the Willebroeck shifts
of chomeurs had designated leaders who put them to work
or enrolled the men on the register of the unemployed on
days when the shift was obliged to be idle. The distribu-
tion of food and money was made in the same systematic
manner. Each shift presented itself with its leader ; pack-
ages of food were prepared in advance ; the booklets identi-
fying the applicants and the amount due them were veri-
fied ; and in less than four hours there was delivered to the
1,400 unemployed all the assistance in kind or in money
to which they were entitled.
362 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXXII
BRICKS AND LACES
BOTH the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the
Provincial Committees were large employers of labor.
A fleet of more than three hundred lighters and their
crews were engaged in the transport of merchandise from
Rotterdam into Belgium. Every province employed hun-
dreds of dockers, shippers, warehousemen, and clerks. In
Antwerp we engaged one of the remarkable groups of
freight handlers called the " Antwerp Nations " : organiza-
tions which date from the earliest commercial prosperity of
the metropolis, which work co-operatively, declaring monthly
dividends and poor relief benefits, hold in common their
capital of horses, carts, and houses, obey an elected dean
and sub-dean, and have from twenty to sixty members
each. We had under contract in the province ten steam
mills; one for maize belonging to the National Committee
and milled for the whole of Belgium ; one working on wheat
for the account of the Provincial Committee of Limbourg;
one for the Waesland, and seven for the account of the Pro-
vincial Committee of Antwerp. We employed clerks and ac-
countants to apportion supplies to the 165 communes in
the province, and flour to the 185 bakeries in the city of
Antwerp. We engaged private detectives to smell out
frauds. We paid thousands of women and girls in the
clothing workshops, and in the villages we paid day wages
to the builders of temporary houses.
But these efforts were as nothing in the face of the all
but universal unemployment.
Commerce and industry were practically dead. Of the
natural resources of Belgium, only land and minerals were
available for an industrial revival. But agriculture was
dead until spring, and the coal mines in the region called
APPENDIX 363
the Borinage, which hold the most important mineral wealth
of Belgium, were already opened by the Germans and
worked to their profit. In normal years Belgian imports
and exports of coal and coke practically balance.
Coal from the Belgian province of Hainaut was shipped
in railway cars and canal boats, and sold through a Ger-
man Kohlen-Zentrale in Brussels. With this revival of
industry the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the
National Committee had nothing to do.
Our interest in Belgian industry was based solely on plans
for the relief of the unemployed. A good case was that
of the brick industries in the province of Antwerp. These
in peace time employ large numbers of people, and as
early as December, 1914, the Antwerp Provincial Com-
mittee, the city of Antwerp, and the National Bank of Bel-
gium raised 300,000 francs — one-third of which was sub-
scribed by the Provincial Committee — to subsidize the brick
works in the neighborhood of Boom, Rumpst, Terhaegen,
Niel, Schelle, and Hemixem, where a working population
of more than 15,000 brick workers was idle.
The money was advanced to the communes, which in their
turn made advances in salary checks to the workers.
Special communal storehouses were established, where work-
men and their families could exchange the checks for food
and other commodities. Salaries were payable up to eighty
per cent in these checks, and food was furnished at reduced
prices. The brick factories were responsible for the value
of the checks, and were under obligations to repay the sums
advanced them, three months after the conclusion of peace.
The case of the brick industry was relatively simple.
Bricks can easily be stored, and will be readily marketable
after the war when the period of rebuilding begins. In the
case of other important industries more serious problems
presented themselves, and one by one they were found prac-
tically insurmountable.
364 APPENDIX
Lace, however, belongs to another category. It is one of
the few industrial products which has no military value,
and the Belgian lace industry employs vast numbers of
people. Unfortunately, it has been brutally exploited. In
peace time the lace-makers receive practically nothing for
their work, and are controlled by patrons so closely or-
ganized that improvement is almost impossible. Both men
and women engage in lace-making. Farm laborers who
spend the summers in southern Belgium and in France,
spend the winters in their Flemish homesteads, and occupy
their spare time with the making of lace. Many of the
convent schools are lace factories under another name.
And the summer tourist will remember having seen in almost
every Belgian village he visited, lines of women and girls,
sitting in the streets before their cottages, with a handful
of little bobbins, spinning white spider web over wooden
pillows laid across their knees. Such villagers are the
makers of the famous Mechlin and Valenciennes laces.
Immediate relief, not social reform, was all that the
Commission could undertake. On the first enrollment,
43,328 lace workers applied for assistance, and were helped
through a lace committee of which Mrs. Brand Whitlock
was honorary-president. An attempt then was made by
the Commission for Relief in Belgium to sell Belgian laces
in America, but the effort was not a success, and the Com-
mission abandoned on principle attempts to vend abroad the
products of Belgian toil.
APPENDIX 365
APPENDIX XXXIII
THE CROP COMMISSION
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
NEGOTIATIONS were initiated in the month of June look-
ing toward the drastic control of the 1915 harvest of
breadstuffs. The total harvest of such materials in the
" Occupation " zone (all Belgium except West Flanders
and about one-half of East Flanders) will be controlled
by a Commission comprising Belgian and American
representatives from the Commission for Relief and the
Comite National, together with representatives of the Ger-
man authorities. It has been determined that an appro-
priate proportion of each peasant's production will be set
aside for seed and food for his family through the year
and will be left in his possession. The excess will be taken
over at fixed prices by our organization and distributed
pari passu with imported material over the entire twelve
months. Drastic penalties have been enacted against any
traffic in breadstuffs except by the Commission. By these
means speculation will be prevented, even distribution se-
cured, and the destination of the breadstuffs to the civil
population will be assured. The amount in excess of the
requirements of the agriculturists — about 1,250,000 people
— is not likely to be very great, but this class will have been
placed in a position of security and removed from the care
of the Commission so far as breadstuffs are concerned.
The actual effect on wheat imports cannot yet be de-
termined, but it appears that owing to the exhaustion of
other reserves a continued import of 50,000 tons per month
will be necessary after harvest. The great staple of pota-
toes promises well and it is hoped will be sufficient to carry
through next year without imports.
366 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXXIV
BELGIAN HARVESTS
AGRICULTURE had been a constant concern of the Com-
mission and the National Committee almost from the be-
ginnings of the work. On my arrival in Antwerp in Decem-
ber, 1914, 1 found a small volunteer organization, called the
Agricultural and Horticultural Committee, under the
presidency of Mr. W. A. van der Veen, a tall, slender
Dutchman who had come to Antwerp with money raised in
Holland for charitable purposes, and who intended espe-
cially to help the farmers of the country. He had been in
the Boer War, and told exciting and picturesque stories of
his adventures. It was hard to believe that such an im-
maculate, devout, energetic gentleman once was elected
colonel of a band of Boers because, as he told it, " he was
the best thief in the lot." His wartime foraging had given
way long since to constructive statesmanship, and he knew
exactly how to deal with the Belgian Farmers' Union,
called in Flemish, Boerenbond. It was through Mr. van der
Veen's committee that the Agricultural Section of the
Provincial Committee was developed for Antwerp.
Belgium uses a greater weight of chemical fertilizers per
square mile than any other country in the world. Besides,
peasant children on hands and knees scrape up dung from
the roads and put it on the land. The Committee organ-
ized an agricultural co-operative society which purchased
supplies, such as seed and fertilizers; the communes as-
sisted by placing waste land and supplies at the disposition
of farmers, and the crop was his who grew it. In several
communes men were encouraged to dig up vacant lots,
and the municipality donated seed potatoes and manures.
The close-cropped lawns about some of the finest castles
in Belgium were plowed up, and potatoes planted where
APPENDIX 367
flowerbeds had been. In many cases choice estates were
given wholly to cultivation, and the proprietors saw nothing
but potato tops whichever way they looked.
In normal times 18.79 Per cent °f tne population is
employed in agriculture, and of these 42.82 per cent are
women.
APPENDIX XXXV
THE NORTH OF FRANCE
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
of Northern France, June 30, 1915.
THE inadequacy of local production, together with the
destruction resulting from military operations, brought
about a shortage of food supply which threatened the
population with famine in its most acute form. The condi-
tion of the people was much akin to that of Belgium, but
instead of the first symptoms of famine appearing in
November, as in the case of Belgium, it was, even in the
most denuded districts, delayed until January, and the
situation did not become universal before March. . . .
The figures indicate a shrinkage of about one million from
the normal population, due to the mobilization, emigration,
and other wastages due to the war. Practically the whole
of the male population eligible for military service has
gone, and in addition, a considerable proportion of the
elderly men of commercial experience and superior char-
acter were drafted into other sections upon the advance
of the German army, so that there is in many localities a
distinct shortage of men of the experience and character
necessary for leadership. The difficulties of organization
have, therefore, been correspondingly increased, the labor
368 APPENDIX
of distribution being concentrated upon a smaller body of
available men than in Belgium. One concomitant of this
situation is the preponderance of helpless women and
children.
APPENDIX XXXVI
FRENCH FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
of Northern France, June 30, 1915.
THE whole of the foodstuffs imported are sold to the
District Committees at prices fixed by the Commission.
The District Committees, in turn, sell the foodstuffs to
the Communal Committees at a small advance, sufficient
to cover the local cost of redistribution. The communes,
in turn, re-sell the foodstuffs without profit to the popula-
tion. At this point in the cycle an involved transaction is
necessary owing to the absolute disappearance of all normal
circulating media throughout the country, and in order to
provide for the destitute. To supply the deficiency in cur-
rency each commune is now printing its own notes from
2 centimes up to 50 francs. This currency is put into cir-
culation by the communes by:
(a) Payment for communal services,
(b) Loans to individuals against property,
(c) Benevolence to the destitute.
Under the latter two classes sufficient advances are made
to enable the population to live. The Communal Commit-
tees in turn accept this local currency in payment for the
ration of foodstuffs which the people eat daily. Thus, the
Communal Committees become possessed of local com-
APPENDIX 369
munal currency representing the value of the foodstuffs
which they have issued to the population. The Committee,
in turn, surrenders these notes to the Communal Authori-
ties against an obligation of the Commune to pay an equiva-
lent sum after the war is over, and these obligations, to-
gether with guarantees by the individual members of the
District Committees, form the basis upon which advances
are obtained abroad. In order to facilitate matters of ac-
counting, the foodstuffs are debited by the Commission to
the Comite National Beige, who, in turn, debit them to the
various District Committees and secure the necessary obliga-
tions in return, the Comite Beige thus having the responsi-
bility of detailed accounting.
As stated above, the Commission fixes the prices at which
foodstuffs are debited to the District Committees, and these
prices are fixed at a rate somewhat above the cost. A
margin is thus secured by the Commission, which is devoted
to three purposes : —
(a) Indemnification of Local Committees in cases of ac-
cidental destruction of warehouses, or deterioration.
(b) Unforeseen losses in transportation.
(c) Reserve against fluctuations in exchange and food
prices.
If any portion of the margin remains after these services
it will be ultimately credited to the communes, as the Com-
mission operates absolutely without profit, and the whole of
its direction is carried on by volunteers.
In the matter of the reserve for exchange and food fluc-
tuations ; it will be readily appreciated that there are violent
fluctuations in exchange between the French franc and the
foreign markets in which the foodstuffs must be procured
against gold, and this, together with the fluctuations in the
prices of foodstuffs and the cost of transportation, Would
render it wholly impossible to charge these foodstuffs out
370 APPENDIX
to the District Committees at actual cost from day to day.
It was, therefore, determined by the Commission that the
whole operation could be greatly simplified by adjusting
prices from time to time at round figures, which leave a
small margin to cover eventualities. Despite the inacces-
sibility of the area and the enormous difficulties of trans-
portation and distribution, the price of bread has been
maintained at approximately the price in Paris.
APPENDIX XXXVII
FUNDING THE RELIEF WORK
Reprinted from the Report of the Commission for Relief
in Belgium, June 30, 1915.
THE joint organizations have secured advances, from
patriotic Belgian Banks and Institutions, of an aggregate
sum of $10,000,000 of working capital for the Provisioning
Department, and this sum, together with the credits which
have been obtained by the Commission, would be sufficient
to revolve the Department on itself, were it possible to effect
exchange of the receipts from food sales. In fact, aside
from the working capital, the whole financial problem of
the Provisioning Department is one of exchange, and this
problem is surrounded with the greatest of difficulties.
These difficulties arise from the fact that the receipts in
Belgium are entirely in Belgian paper currency, and that
this currency is inconvertible into gold, for legal and
economic reasons. . . .
While the work of the Provisioning Department is in the
nature of a commercial operation, its inception and ad-
ministration constitute a humanitarian effort of the first
order, these phases being: —
APPENDIX 371
FIRST. — The negotiations which have opened the door
through the belligerent lines by which foodstuffs may pass
through to the Belgian people, and the constant negotiations
necessary to maintain this opening, the import and distribu-
tion being surrounded with an extensive series of guarantees
which form part of the responsibilities of the Commission.
SECOND. — The Department is restricted in its operations
by the belligerent governments as to the character and
quantities of commodities it can import and by its available
resources, and it is therefore necessary to insist upon a
just and equitable division of the whole of the imports over
the entire population, and in this phase the department has
up to date succeeded in its task of at least providing a
sufficiency to preserve life and health as is evidenced by
the remarkably healthy condition of the entire population.
THIRD. — The footstuffs are sold at a profit, and the
profits thus earned are given absolutely to the Benevolent
Department for the support of the destitute. These profits
are in the nature of a tax on those people in Belgium who
have means, for the benefit of the destitute. Such profits
have been made possible solely by the generous volunteer
executive, commercial, and transportation services, and the
amount of these profits is practically the measure of the
value of such volunteer service, because the prices fixed for
foodstuffs in Belgium have been no greater than retail prices
in London. It is interesting to note that, aside from the
savings in cost, owing to many direct concessions, the entire
overhead expenditure of the Commission as shown by
the annexed accounts amounts to considerably less than
one per cent of the value of foodstuffs handled.
372 APPENDIX
APPENDIX XXXVIII
GOVERNMENTAL SUBSIDIES
Reprinted from the first Annual Report of the Commis
sion for Relief in Belgium, October,
IT was . . . agreed in February, 1915, that the British
and French Governments would advance monthly £500,000
and 12,500,000 francs, respectively, to the Belgian Govern-
ment at Le Havre for the service of the Commission for
Relief in Belgium. . . .
APPENDIX XXXIX
BELGIAN GRATITUDE
THROUGHOUT this narrative I have not spared the per-
sonal pronoun. A further offence against delicacy may
be permitted me, as evidence of the Belgian exaggeration
of one individual's personal importance and as another ex-
ample of their feelings toward America and Americans.
Translation of part of an article which appeared in the
Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, Rotterdam, Holland, on
October 18, 1915.
ANTWERP, October 16.
The simple official demonstration which took place this
morning in the beautiful Marriage Hall of the City Hall
had a specially touching significance. The Burgomaster
and Aldermen, as well as the members of the City Council,
stood grouped together there, in order to say a few solemn
words of thanks to Mr. Edward Eyre Hunt, the delegate of
the Commission for Relief in Belgium to the National Relief
Committee in the province of Antwerp. Mr. Hunt is leav-
APPENDIX 373
ing for the United States, and the administration of our
town wished to celebrate his departure in a suitable way.
Burgomaster Jan de Vos first spoke, to express how much
the Belgian people, and especially the Antwerpians, in
these tragic times, have to thank their benefactors; for
Mr. Hunt has, by his devotion at all times, carried out his
beautiful humane task in an exemplary manner. As a sign
of our gratitude, our comfortable old City-Father handed
to Mr. Hunt, in the name of the city of Antwerp, a gold
medal of honor with a figure of our King, and replicas
thereof in silver and bronze. The medal has the following
inscription : " The City of Antwerp to Mr. Edward Eyre
Hunt, i6th October, 1915." Our municipal Secretary,
Hubert Melis, was then requested by the Burgomaster to
read an address, wherein the grateful feelings of all were
recorded. This address is printed on Plantin's press by the
master-printers, the famous firm of J. E. Buschmann. It
reads literally as follows:
CITY OF ANTWERP
Today, October i6th, 1915, the City Council of Antwerp
has assembled with the Burgomaster and Aldermen, to say
farewell to Mr. Edward Eyre Hunt on the Occasion of his
departure from this City, and to thank him for the devo-
tion and the skill shown by him in carrying out his mission
as Delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium to the
National Relief Committee in the province of Antwerp.
The gathering thereby requested Mr. Hunt to express to
his chiefs, and especially to his fellow-citizens in the United
States, the deeply moved feelings of gratitude which Bel-
gium, sorely tried, but so wonderfully upheld, feels for
her kind and noble friends across the sea.
The Burgomaster
(Signed) JAN DE Vos.
Antwerp, October i6th, 1915
By order
The Secretary
(Signed) HUBERT MELIS.
374 APPENDIX
Mr. Hunt, much moved, thanked them for their praise,
and assured them that he would long hold in warm re-
membrance his stay in Antwerp.
Significant of the respect and reverence in which Antwerp
has held the Americans who came here to relieve the pre-
vailing need, so far as was in their power, is the following
fact which has come to my ears, and which should be
made known, although I do not wish thereby in any way
to wound the modesty of our worthy fellow townsman. A
great Antwerp business man, Mr. Bunge, immediately
placed his palatial house at Mr. Hunt's disposal, while Mr.
Bunge himself went to his country estate at Hoogboom.
The liberality of the Americans here found a counterpart in
Antwerp hospitality.
Word for word, the address of the city is given above.
It is in Dutch, the official language of the Flemish city of
Antwerp. When the municipal Secretary wished to repeat
the address in English for the benefit of Mr. Hunt, to the
surprise of all present Mr. Hunt replied that he had under-
stood the address, since, during the year he had lived in
Antwerp, he had felt bound to make himself familiar with
the language of the people.
A declaration which went to the hearts of the representa-
tives of the Antwerpians, and which the whole of our people
will know how to appreciate as a proof of respect for our
national character. A noble American citizen here gave a
fine example to many Belgians.
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
D Hunt, Edward Eyre
638 War bread
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11